Ghosts and Lightning Read online

  —Wha d’youse want?

  —I was just lookin for yer da, Jay. Are yeh alright?

  —Fuck off, he says. Then he looks up at the big upstairs window.

  —Da, here’s the eejits to see yeh! he shouts, and turns and stomps away up the street.

  —I think we should just, like, leave it for the moment, says Pajo. —Come back after.

  —Yeah, probably, I say. —We’ll head down the 79 and have a few jars, wha? No point in discommodin Angry fuckin Dad in there. Sure we’ll –

  It takes me a few seconds to realise Maggit and Pajo aren’t lookin at me, they’re lookin over me shoulder. I turn around and Gino’s standin there, his yellow Liverpool jersey slightly ripped at the collar and a bead o sweat tricklin down the blasted bridge of his nose. His recedin hairline looks more severe than the last time I saw it. He’s the image o me da, Gino is: the same harsh-lookin mouth and the same twinklin eyes. He’s growin a beard as well, which, coupled with the dodgy hairdo, makes him look a lot older than thirty-four. He spits into the garden next door and draws his thick forearm across his glistenin forehead.

  —Wha? he says.

  *

  I haven’t seen Gino since the funeral. I think we’re both happier when we exist on the edges of each other’s radars. We’ve never been close, not even when we were younger. Gino and Shane were thick as thieves though. The two o them, they were lunatics. Always in fights and out actin the maggot, robbin, all sorts. They were mad into horses as well. Kept them in the fields down near the canal. They loved their horses but they were a status symbol as well. They made names for themselves as harchaws, like me da did as a younger man. They got on well, the three o them, when they were drunk especially; that’s when the wild and proud and stupid bonds they shared came out, the fighters and carousers. The big men. It’s like there’s a part o them that doesn’t fit with the time they live in.

  Me da used to be in mad moods after he’d come home at night from the pub. He’d go from tellin stories to sittin there dead sullen and quiet in the armchair. I came downstairs one night for a drink o water and saw him sittin in his chair, dead still, the only light comin from the streetlight outside the house. I looked at him for a few seconds. I thought he was dead at first, then asleep. And then me eyes got used to the dark and I realised he was wide awake, his eyes open. I asked him was he alright but he said nothin back.

  Anyway, we pass through the hall and the kitchen. I can hear Tracy stompin around upstairs. Me and Maggit and Pajo stand by the sink while Gino rummages around in the fridge. He pulls out a can o Budweiser and cracks it open.

  I don’t know wha to say to him. Our ma’s dead. All of a sudden I’m in the collective shoes of all the people who’ve bumped into me in the past few months; neighbours and old people I vaguely know from pubs, concerned looks on their faces.

  Sorry for yer loss.

  Terrible sad news about yer ma.

  Sure time’s a great healer, son.

  Fuckin hell.

  I take out me phone and look at it for no reason. Gino takes a sup from the can.

  —Em … how yeh keepin? I say.

  Gino nods and turns and opens the back door.

  *

  The wooden fencin round Gino’s back garden is warped and collapsin in on itself and the grass is dark and long and peppered with the bobbin white heads o Jinny Joes. There’s a narrow concrete pathway through the middle and two archin trees at the back framin a paintpeelin and shitestreaked pigeon loft that looks like it was lifted from the set o The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. In front o the loft and half obscured by the grass is the car. How the fuck did Gino get the car out here? Oul Blind Robbie is sittin on a kitchen chair under the pigeonloft’s overhang, his beard tangly and his shoulderlength hair stickin out from under a tatty Coca-Cola baseball cap. Robbie’s an old mate o me da’s. They used to buy pigeons off each other. Me and Paula were terrified of him when we were younger; we used to say that he could see into the future with his mad, sightless eyes — he could tell yeh how yid die. Robbie’s strokin a sleek and exotic-lookin pigeon on his lap and there’s two kids, one freckly and redheaded, the other pale and fairhaired, standin on either side of him like bizarre underage sentinels. The kids are both wearin identical green tracksuits with their zippers tight under their chins. Yeh always see them round the place with Robbie. They’re not related to him or anythin, or I don’t think they are, anyway — they’re like his squires or apprentices or somethin, pigeon fanciers in the makin.

  —The car’s up here, says Gino.

  —Cool, I say.

  Robbie says somethin under his breath to the kids and they laugh into their tracksuit collars and look at each other knowinly. Pajo trails his hands through the grass and wild flowers.

  —They’re lovely, he says. —Are they geraniums?

  No one answers him.

  —Anythin strange? I say.

  Gino shrugs and sniffs and picks at the edge of his wide nostril. —So so. I hear yer havin a great time up there in ma’s, wreckin the place.

  —No. It’s –

  —Yiz are, Denny. I heard off Shane. Off o fuckin everyone. That Paula one’d wanna get her fuckin act together. Tell her I said that. And if all this I’m hearin about fuckin junkies and all sorts is true … won’t be happy, Denny, that’s all I’ll say.

  —Yeah, fair enough.

  Gino stares dead ahead while he’s sayin this but he turns round when we’re a few feet from the car and he’s smilin, ready to do business. The smile looks anythin but comfortin on his battered face. Looks predatory, like the kind o smile he’d wear before loafin someone. Or bitin their nose off, which he’s done before. John Sweeney, that was. He got it sorted out, like; got it fixed up, but yeh can still see where Gino bit. It’s all misshapen and lumpy. Gino fuckin Cullen, wha? That fuckin smile, on a face that’s somethin like mine but older and remodelled by other people’s fists. He slaps the car’s bonnet and the car makes a weird, birdlike sound.

  —There she is ladies, he says.

  It doesn’t look like much. Looks like a pile o fuckin shite, to be honest. But I suppose I can’t complain with the money I’m offerin. In a way it’s –

  Fuckin hell.

  The car’s full o chickens.

  I don’t believe this: a dozen or so fat white chickens huddled on the seats, cluckin and blinkin away in their scruffy straw beds. Shite all over the place as well and a heavy, concentrated farmyard smell. I look at Pajo and Maggit and then at Gino, who’s on his haunches and pullin up handfuls o grass. He picks out single blades and lets them fall and then he looks up at me, eyes squinted against the glare o the sun.

  —Yeh OK? he says.

  —Are they chickens?

  —No. They’re fuckin griffins.

  Robbie and the two kids laugh. So does Maggit.

  —Ah here, I say. —If I wanted a chickencoop I could o got one down the pet shop.

  —Wash the thing out and it’ll be grand. Bit o fuckin elbow grease, Denny. There’s not a brack on it.

  —Could o been worse, says Blind Robbie. —Usually dead bodies in Gino’s motors. Yid wanna check the boot. Robbie laughs to himself and his small eyes roll and tumble randomly in their sockets like two bluish egg yolks in shallow bowls, and it actually does occur to me to check the boot there and then, just in case, like. But I don’t. I take a step back and Pajo hops forward eagerly and sticks his head through the passenger seat window and starts cluckin and cooin. Maggit looks at me and shakes his head. There’s a slight smile on his face, though.

  —How the fuck am I gonna get the thing out? I say.

  —Crane, says Gino.

  —And how am I gonna get a crane?

  —A mate o mine’s workin on that site down the road.

  —He’ll lift it out?

  —Yeah. I’d say so. I’ll givvim a buzz.

  —Will he want money?

  —Few quid probly.

  —And who’s payin him?

  —Who d’
yeh think?

  —This is … I didn’t think it was gonna be –

  —Denny, yeh told me yeh wanted it. I have the money spent already. It’ll be a few quid only. Although yer man’s off on his holliers so yill have to wait. Think he’ll be back next week.

  —Look … it’d be one thing if it was somethin off Top Gear but –

  —It’s grand. Yid wanna see the roll cage in it, that car’s been rallied by fuckin pros.

  —Yeah, it looks like it has as well. State of it.

  —Yeh could roll that car all the way to Wicklow and it’d be grand. Solid as a rock.

  —Yeah, but … yeh know? Yeh can’t just –

  —Wha?

  I look at Maggit. —Wha d’you think?

  —Don’t give a bollix Denny, he says. —You’re the one wanted a car. I’m happy walkin.

  —Yeah, yer givin the few quid still though aren’t yeh? Off it?

  Maggit looks at the car and shakes his head again, lettin out a long, exaggerated sigh. Tryin to ingratiate himself with Gino, like. —Yeah, he says. —Wharrever Denny.

  —I’ll give a hundred for it, I say to Gino.

  —We said one fifty.

  —Yeah, it’s fuckin diabolical lookin though. And I’ve to pay to get it out o here, which is a fuckin —One thirty.

  —One twenty. And that’s a rip off.

  —Alright. One twenty.

  I look at the car. It’s red with a big thick bumper. I know fuck all about cars, really. I mean, makes and that — I don’t have a clue. Pajo’s nearly halfway in the window, his denim jacket ridin up and a few inches of his pale, skinny back showin. Maggit’s diggin in his pocket for the fifty euro with an unimpressed look on his face.

  —I’ll have to owe yeh the score, I say. After the shock o seein the car I need a few scoops, like.

  Gino nods. Maggit hands him the fifty and I give him me scrunched up ball o tens and twenties. Gino sticks Maggit’s money into his pocket and hands my fifty to Robbie. Robbie hands the fancy pigeon to the blond kid, who receives it with reverence, and him and his redheaded mate carefully pick their way up the steps to the pigeonloft door. The redhead unhooks the latch and they disappear inside.

  —That’s grand, says Robbie, stickin the fifty into his jeans pocket, and, to be honest, I’m already experiencin a severe dose o buyer’s remorse. I look over the car again and Pajo finally pulls his head out o the window.

  —Do we get the chickens as well? he says, a dirty white feather stuck to his face and grinnin from ear to ear.

  ROCK N ROLL

  A foreign, Borat-lookin fella wearin a shabby suit and with glasses balancin on the tip of his nose finishes up at hatch three and the queue shuffles forward. It’s like a penniless version o the United Nations in here, Eastern Europeans, Asians, Africans … representatives of every shoddy, goin-nowhere-but-down country on earth. We’re a shoddy country ourselves too, full o guilt and doubt and hidden nastiness. It’s just that, given a possibly brief period o financial well-bein, we happen to scrub up well.

  Have to sort this rent allowance shite out. I’ve been puttin it off, like. Fuckin Shane. I dread comin into places like this. Officialdom, Jesus. I break out in sweats and all sorts, makes me look dead dodgy. It’s a gift that I only have to come here once a month to sign on.

  Gonna pick up a chicken after I’m done here. I’ve invited all the heads round for an early Christmas dinner tonight. I didn’t ask them to come around on Christmas day cos they’d probably rather do their own thing. It’d be a bit embarrassin askin them; I don’t want them to come out o pity or wharrever.

  There’s a couple o young, presumably Polish fellas behind me chattin in, well, Polish, and in front of me there’s a tall, slim African woman with her little girl. The woman’s back is gorgeous. I know that sounds like a weird thing to say but it is, it’s lovely. Her jacket’s under her arm and she’s wearin a loose, wide-necked yellow and orange blouse that falls away from her neck in a swathe o soft, silky cloth and reveals a huge slab of her back. Her skin’s a deep coffee colour and completely smooth cept for the little nobs o vertebrae and her hair’s pinned up, enhancin the view. Yeh never used to see black people in Dublin so a close-up like this still has a bit o novelty value. Plus it’s all yiv got to look at in places like these, people from odd angles, lost in their own thoughts. The little girl’s holdin the woman’s hand and she looks up at me with huge, dark eyes and smiles, then half hides behind the woman’s leg. I give her a wink and she giggles, clappin her hand to her mouth. She’s dead cute, her hair stickin up in little stiff braids and tied off with beads and ribbons. She giggles again and I make a face, then her mother turns and puts her hand on the girl’s head and says somethin in … well, I don’t really know wha language, they’ve loads, don’t they, Africans? All these different tribal tongues. She has a nice profile as well, yer woman. I catch her eye and give her a smile but she turns back round without a change in her poised expression, her eyes still and unfathomable and her head tilted slightly upwards. She says somethin to the kid again, a bit of anger in her voice this time, and roughly jerks her closer to her. Proper yanks her arm.

  Fuck. Bit embarrassin that, like. I mean, I wasn’t tryin to come on to yer woman or anythin. Just bein friendly, yeh know? Doin me best like, nice to be nice and all that.

  The little girl peeks up at me again, half her face obscured by her mother and the other half mostly hid behind her hand. I give her a quick, self-conscious smile and she makes this gleeful squealin noise before her mother jerks her forward again, pullin her completely out o view.

  I peek at me watch, quarter to ten. I might ramble up to Boss Hogs after I’m done here, grab a breakfast roll or somethin before startin on the shoppin.

  Me mobile bleeps. Text message. From Pajo.

  HOWS THINGS DENNY. STORY WITH THE GHOST? STILL GONE? P.

  Fuckin hell.

  I thumb in a reply.

  I HAVE ENOUGH TROUBLE BELIEVING YOU EXIST PAJO, NEVER MIND FUCKING GHOSTS. I’M AT THE DOLE. I’LL TEXT YA AFTER.

  A skinny fella wearin a FCUK jumper vacates the chair at hatch three, noddin as he passes me, identifyin with me, I suppose, as a fellow native Dubliner, and the African woman steps forward, the little girl now timid and joyless as her mother takes yer man’s place in front o the hatch. She pokes round in her handbag for her social welfare card. I stick me hand into me pocket and run me fingers over the little raised numbers and me name, printed in block capitals on me card. DENNY CULLEN — STATE SCROUNGER. Well, not really, like, but it might as well say that, the way some o the people behind the glass carry on in here. Yid think I was a criminal.

  Bzzzz. Another text.

  HAVE FAITH. P.

  There we go, that word again: faith. Pajo fuckin loves it. I fuckin hate it. I hate it cos there’s no way o trickin yerself into it, no amount o thinkin about it can get yeh there -yeh have it or yeh don’t. And I don’t. The African woman stands up, gatherin her purse and her sparkly, sequinned shoulder bag. That was quick. She’s a stunner from the front as well. She looks at me through slightly narrowed eyes, her cheekbones high and her mouth tightly shut. She takes a step forward and there’s an impatient cough from the hatch so I step forward meself, passin her with inches between us, and despite the fuckin craziness of it all, the ineffable, yawnin fuckin difference, I have this brief image in me head o me sittin beside her on Bray beach on a big towel with the Liverpool crest woven into it and she’s wearin a yellow bikini, lookin ludicrously lovely, dark and long-limbed, her kid makin sandcastles in the distance and the two of us chattin about Undertaker’s latest match, sayin how deadly he looks for a forty-odd year old, how agile he is for a big guy, how cool and evocative his entrance music is.

  Jesus, get a grip, Denny.

  I take a seat on the bolted-down plastic swivel chair in the middle o the woman’s still-lingerin perfume and slide me social welfare card under the window, smilin at the fella opposite me. He’s wearin an eye-patch. He’s got a
beard as well so he looks a bit like a slightly fat, middle-class pirate.

  —Howayeh?

  Yer man nods vaguely. No messin about in these places.

  —Name and address of most recent employer? he says.

  —LISK, I say. —That was over a year ago, though. They’re a construction company.

  —Yes, I’m aware. Address?

  —I dunno. I was never in the offices, like. I was on a site in Wicklow, near Powerscourt.

  —Right. We’ll need the address. Reason for termination of previous employment?

  —Eh, I was sacked like. That was donkeys ago though, like I said.

  —That’s unimportant. Sacked?

  —Yeah.

  Bit of an embarrassin story that. We were workin on a hotel in Wicklow, in the middle of a wood, lovely spot, and I got caught pissin in one o the en-suite bathrooms. Thing was, the jax weren’t hooked up yet and there were no pipes or anythin so I was just pissin onto the floor, really. I was dyin though and the prefab jax were five storeys below and a few minutes’ walk away. And anyway, it was Markus, this skinny German fella who was supposed to be me supervisor, who told me to do it; all the Germans on site did it, apparently. Manky fucks. Trust me to get clocked by one o the visitin suits. Ah well.

  —Hmmm, yes. Do you have your P45?

  —Yeah, here.

  I push it under the glass.

  —Have you claimed for assistance with rent this tax year, Mr Cullen?

  —No.

  —No?

  Jesus mate. Don’t sound so surprised. —No, I say again. —I was over in Wales for a while as well, so it was –

  —What was the purpose of the visit?

  —I was studyin there. Or I was gonna. In the end I …

  —Mm hm?

  —Yeah … I had to come back. I wasn’t over for long.

  —I see. What was your position with LISK?

  —Just a labourer, like. A general op or wharrever. I was with the fireproofers.

  —You’re aware that your current unemployment benefit payments are contingent on you seeking and eventually securing new employment? And that you need to be receiving unemployment benefit to receive a rent allowance?