Selected Stories

‘I’d give a thousand bucks for a snort,’ he was saying now, his voice slightly raised, a laugh in it again. ‘Where’d we get ourselves a snort, cowboy?’

Donovan said maybe Dirty Doyle’s, Kilroy suggested Capel Street. It was a kind of play; Martin Manning doing the big fellow, her father would have said. Aisling had become used to it ages ago.

They reached the quiet streets, St Stephen’s Church at the corner of Goodchild Street, the shadowy sprawl of trees on either side of Sunderland Avenue ahead of them.

‘Who’re those geeks?’ Donovan suddenly exclaimed and they all stopped, not knowing where to look at first. But when Francie pointed they saw the red anorak.

‘It’s bloody Dalgety,’ Manning said.

The two parted in Sunderland Avenue, Dalgety turning into Blenning Road. On his own, he went a little faster, but paused when he noticed that one of the garden gates he was passing was invitingly open. He went through it and crossed a lawn to a corner near the house where he couldn’t be seen from the windows. He urinated in the shadow of an eleagnus bush.

Once or twice, making their way from the nightclub, they had been aware of voices behind them but, engrossed in conversation themselves, they hadn’t looked round to see whose they were. Dalgety couldn’t hear the voices now and imagined that whoever they belonged to had gone in some other direction. A light hadn’t come on in the house, which sometimes happened when you found a garden that was convenient for the purpose he had used it for. He unzipped his anorak because he’d noticed that the teeth of the zip hadn’t been properly aligned. While he was zipping it up again he was struck, a blow on the right side of his head. He thought that someone had come out of the house, and was thinking he hadn’t heard the front door opening when the next blow came. He stumbled and fell, and a foot smashed into his jaw when he was lying on the grass. He tried to stand up but couldn’t.

Aisling had watched, not wanting to but she had. Francie had looked away when she saw what was happening. In the garden, standing back at first, not taking part, Donovan moved forward when the boy was lying on the grass. Kilroy stayed with the girl, calculating that he’d lose out with her if he joined in. Nobody spoke while the assault was taking place, not in the garden, not on the road. Nobody did when they all moved on, in a bunch again.

Aisling wondered what the boy had done, what insults had been exchanged in the Star or before that, how the boy had offended. Something of the headiness of the nightclub seemed to be there again, something of the music’s energy, of the wildness that was often in a face as it went by on the dance-floor before it was sucked into the suffocating closeness of the crowd.

‘Oh, leave me be!’ Francie suddenly cried out. ‘Just leave me, would you!’

‘Behave yourself, cowboy.’ Manning’s rebuke came lightly, and for a moment Aisling saw the white gleam of his teeth.

Kilroy muttered, and desisted for a few minutes before he tried again and was again shaken off. In Charleston Road Francie parted from them, scuttling off, not saying goodnight. Kilroy hesitated, but didn’t follow her.

‘Dalgety’s a tit,’ Manning said when Aisling asked why Dalgety had been duffed up. ‘Forget it,’ he said.

‘I never heard that name before,’ Aisling said. ‘Dalgety.’

‘Yeah, a nerd’s.’

Conversation lapsed then, but passing the entrance to the Green-banks Hotel Donovan began on a story about his sister, how she was going to a shrink, and hated it so much she often didn’t turn up for her weekly sessions.

‘Some guy comes on heavy,’ Donovan said. ‘You end up with a shrink.’

Nobody commented. Donovan did not go on; the interrupted silence held. So that was it, Aisling thought, and felt relieved, aware of a relaxation in her body, as if her nerves had been strung up and no longer were. This Dalgety had upset Donovan’s sister, going too far when she didn’t want him to, whatever form his persistence took putting her in need of psychiatric care. And the anger Aisling had witnessed in the garden touched her, what had happened seeming different, less than it had been while she watched.

‘See you, Mano,’ Donovan said. ‘Cheers, Aisling.’

She said goodnight. Donovan turned into Cambridge Road, and soon afterwards Kilroy turned off, too.

‘All right, was he?’ Aisling asked then.

‘Who’s this?’

‘Dalgety.’

‘Christ, of course he was.’

They went to Spire View Lane, where they always went when it was as late as this. ‘You’re a dazzler tonight,’ Manning whispered, slipping his hands beneath her clothes.

She closed her eyes, kissing him back, his early-morning stubble harsh on her chin. The first time she had experienced that roughness it had excited her, and every time since it had. ‘I’d best be getting back,’ she said, not that she wanted to get back anywhere.

A dog came sniffing at them, some kind of small breed, black or grey, you couldn’t tell in the dark. Someone whistled for it and it ran off.