The Arrival of Fergal Flynn Page 3

  Regardless of the time of day, whenever the news came that a young man had starved himself to death and drawn his final breath, everyone took to the streets. On their hands and knees, they repeatedly banged the lids of their bins, or of the biggest pots they had, off the middle of the road until it was morning. Army helicopters scraped the sky in response and then hovered as low as they could get, making the air tremble with each push of their blades. They aimed blinding spotlights over the terrified streets and for an insane second the circles of light made Fergal, shivering in the street in his old pyjama bottoms and a vest that was getting too small for him, think of an old Hollywood blockbuster he'd seen on Granny Noreen's black-and-white TV.

  It wasn't long before the cold night air forced him awake properly. Nothing could drown out the desperate Morse Code of the bin lids, calling to the world for help. Petrified kids wailed themselves hoarse as the older people chanted rosary after pointless rosary into the hopeless, soaking, percussive darkness. Fergal suddenly knew what Hell sounded like. He heard his da talking to other men about the Civil War and concentration camps, the more religious of the pensioners talked about the end of the world. They stayed there, waiting, until, one by one, the bin lids stopped and they could go back to bed. The lights had to be left on all night in the living room of every house and the fires were kept going.

  Angela was out of her wits with fear that her husband would get arrested himself, or killed, at any second. The Flynns were far from political - it was sport that really got Paddy Sr fired up -but he agreed to join a few of the other husbands on a night watch to patrol the area. There were countless stories of soldiers and 'snatch squads' kidnapping men and boys over yard walls during the night - or, in some cases, in broad daylight - to kill them, or at the very least inflict serious damage. So every once in a while one of the local men could be seen walking the length of the yard wall behind the terraced houses with a hurling stick, to see what or who was coming. There seemed to be a funeral every week, and with it usually came more trouble, more deaths and more funerals, in an endless cycle of misery.

  When the first anniversary of Bobby Sands' death came, there was the riot of all riots. It lasted for days. No one could go out, no milk was delivered. The guns and bombs and sirens sounded like they were in the next room. The Flynns heard about people they knew who'd been shot dead - one of the neighbours' sons had been brain damaged by a plastic bullet to the head. Their house was raided, along with the whole street, and the army's mucky boots ruined the stair carpet while Angela screamed at them to get the fuck out. Paddy said nothing. He knew he was a heartbeat away from being arrested and beaten to a pulp if they felt like it, and he'd just managed to get a new job with the civil service. Once the front door was locked again, no one dared go out of it. It was the first time Fergal had felt safer in the house than out.

  The next morning, when the milk was unexpectedly delivered, Fergal negotiated the minefield of bricks, broken glass and tyres along the back streets of West Belfast on his way to school. It was impossible to avoid the soldiers and their Coronation Street barks. They'd blow 'is fucking 'ead off. Where was 'e going? When was 'e coming back? Fergal answered in Irish first, for a bit of practice, but one of them jammed his rifle right against Fergal's balls and told him it would be a pity if it went off, 'by accident, like'. That kind of accident wasn't exactly uncommon and Fergal blurted out too fast, in English, that he was on his way to mass and then to school. Why else would I be wearing this stupid fucking uniform? he thought.

  The soldiers' camouflage made them stand out like fridges in the desert. Why they never thought to wear dirty, brick-coloured clothes, with the odd bit of badly spelled graffiti across the chest and back, was a mystery. They would have made much less prominent targets for dog shite. Discarded nappies were another great form of ammunition, if you could wrestle the prize away from the feasting mutt who'd just claimed it from the pram of a particularly well-fed child or from next door's bin - seeing as the lids were usually missing.

  ~

  St Bridget's Parish Church was quiet just after eight o'clock every weekday morning - most of the insomniac pensioners went to the seven o'clock mass and the next one wasn't until nine. Fergal had started going to church with Angela's mother, his Granny Noreen. He'd stayed the odd weekend at Noreen's because of the rioting and had begun to accompany her to mass a few times a week on his way to school. She'd started to find it difficult to walk, so he'd link her arm and they'd move at a snail's pace. Inevitably she met about a thousand people she wanted to talk to, and Fergal would make it to school just in time. Gradually she found it harder and harder to leave the house, whether there was 'trouble' or not, and Fergal found that he missed the little ritual, so he went on his own.

  He'd become fascinated with the entire building. There wasn't another one like it on the road. It was so clean for a start. The thick, graffiti-free walls were made from enormous blocks of precisely cut stone, and you had to crane your neck to see the weathered green crucifix perched at the very top of the single steeple, high above the neatly slated roof that the parishioners were still paying for. Above the entrance there was a huge, circular stained-glass window that had been perforated by the stray bullets of a riot, but the damage was too high up to show. The church had managed a strange balance of strength and fragility. Fergal thought it looked like it had dropped out of the sky, like Dorothy's house in The Wizard of Oz. It was surrounded by identical, tiny, red-brick terraced houses, huddled together like they were queuing up to sign on the dole. The moment he was inside and the big wooden doors shut behind him, peace fell like an invisible command. It was as if someone had unplugged the rest of the world except for the little squad of mantilla-clad widows polishing and tidying everything in their path, stopping only to genuflect arthritically towards the altar if they had to turn away to dust a clay saint or a difficult-to-reach wooden crucifix. Fergal sat in the middle row, clamped like a limpet to an ancient radiator - on Sundays it was hogged by the quickest of the pensioners who couldn't afford to heat their own houses.

  The newly lit candles gossiped amongst themselves, and there was a faint smell of incense and brass polish lingering in the cloisters. Fergal loved the wordless calm. He sat there studying each religious depiction with his hands interlocked as if he was praying, just in case he was suddenly challenged. He thought that if he sat still for long enough, he would be buffed to a spit-shine by one of the widows, who always vanished as silently as they arrived.

  All too soon, the clock above the entrance sounded half past eight. It was time for Fergal to leave, for his final year of school.

  4

  Paddy Flynn was in training for the Silent Olympics. The only thing that broke this strict regime was whiskey, which translated itself into swift and vicious blows to any part of anybody that was in his way.

  He was unusual in that he'd been the elder of only two children - most families had a minimum of four - and the sole surviving child of Ernest and Ethel Flynn. His sister had suffered a cot death within a week of coming home from the hospital. His mother had blamed herself and had never really got over it.

  Ethel and Ernest had met at a dance hall when he was on leave from the army. She was seventeen and he was almost thirty - he knew she was the one before they even spoke, and she thought he looked like Clark Gable. Their romance was instant. When he went back to the war she discovered, like so many of her generation, that she was pregnant, but she was luckier than most. Ernest was old-fashioned enough to do what was considered the right thing. They were married in England within the month, just after she'd turned eighteen and she suddenly found herself an army wife, away from home, living in unfamiliar barracks in East Anglia. When their whopping ten-pound boy arrived on 17 March, toasted by copious pints of Guinness in the officers' club, what could they call him only Patrick?

  The marriage went well for the first few years, but when the little one died and Ernest was away more and more, Ethel started to miss her family in Belfa
st. As Patrick got closer to school age, they decided it would be best if she returned home on her own to bring him up there. For the first ten or eleven years of his life, Patrick rarely saw his father and when Corporal Ernest Flynn eventually moved back to live with them, he brought with him stiff army distance and severe beatings for the smallest mistake.

  Patrick tried throughout his childhood to crack the code and find the secret that would bring him the approval he so desperately craved. He threw himself into competitive sport but, no matter how many cups and medals he brought home, his father had always witnessed someone better in the army. Then he'd rant on about the front line, and anyone who dared interrupt him -including Ethel - would get a swift kick and, if they argued, a vicious beating. His attempts to assert his masculinity knocked the love and spirit right out of Ethel, and she transferred all of her hopes and dreams to her big strong son. Patrick grew taller than his father by the time he was fourteen. He developed a habit of hitting his mother, too. Though he was always sorry for it and she always forgave him, saying she'd driven him to it.

  Ernest died of bowel cancer - that he'd kept hidden even from Ethel - just before Patrick turned seventeen. The other surprise was that he'd managed to gamble away all of his army pension. At the wake, some old army companion harped on about what a hero Ernest had been until Ethel leaned in and slapped her husband's dead face in front of the whole room.

  ~

  5

  For as long as he could remember, Fergal had had a strangely comforting recurring dream that always seemed to arrive just when he needed it most. There he'd be, as a much younger boy, sitting on the doorstep of the house and all of a sudden a big, clean, silver car would slide up the street and out would step his real parents, beaming, with open arms. Through tears of relief, they would apologise for having taken so long to find him. Then they would bundle up their long-lost son in a brand-new blanket, kissing and hugging him, and carry him to the wheels of his new life. Everything was in slow motion, and they would drive and drive for the longest time, out to the countryside, with him safely asleep on the back seat. Then he'd wake up and wish he hadn't.

  ~

  For his weekly ablutions, Fergal would stay in the tiny bathroom - the only room in the house that could be locked - as long as he could. The bathroom would transform into a steam room when the hot water hit the cold air. The tub would fill about a third of the way before suddenly turning cold again - the immersion heater took ages to work and Angela roared at him if he left it on too long. After making doubly sure the door was locked, Fergal would lower himself into the roasting water, ankles first. Gradually he would let the rest of his body sink into the water, until he was almost completely covered, and exhale loudly. Then he'd start to wash himself with soap from yet another hospital heist by Angela's domestic friend. He had had dandruff for a while - his head had itched like crazy, and by the end of every school week his blazer had been dusted in a thick white avalanche of flakes -but he'd started washing his hair with a shampoo that the doctor had recommended and the difference was brilliant. His hair shone and he'd stopped scratching so much.

  It wouldn't be long before one of his brothers started knocking, saying they were bursting for the toilet - but the locked door gave Fergal an extra bit of courage and he'd tell them to go round to Noreen's if they were that desperate. There was no way he was letting them in while he was in the bath. He'd duck his head under the water for as long as he could bear so as not to hear their whispered threats.

  Fergal had it all organised. Once out of the bath, he handwashed his dirty underwear in the water - he always made sure he had a clean pair to put on. Their towels were all in a terrible state, but the green one, which had been sent over from England by an auntie a few years earlier, was his favourite. It was ripped and rough and hard now from all the boil washes it had been through, but he still liked to dream about the shop where it had been bought, over in London. He'd wipe the steam off the window and open it a bit to let the heat out. One day I'm going to have nice towels. I'm going to have loads of them - and loads of knickers too.

  When he felt safe enough, he'd inspect his ever-changing body in the badly hung cabinet mirror, balancing precariously on the toilet seat to get a better view of his genitals. The damp hair on his body was suddenly darker and thicker and he marvelled at all the places it grew that he hadn't noticed before. As he untangled the coarse private nest with his fingers, he suddenly wondered what his parents looked like without their clothes on. Then he decided he didn't want to know. He wondered about his brothers too - was he very different from them? It was a minor miracle that, in such a small house, they'd never really seen each other naked - apart from one time when Paddy had tipped a scalding cup of tea into his own lap when his team had scored on the TV. He'd had to pull down his tracksuit bottoms to his ankles and hop about the room, frantically blowing on his scorched penis and finally throwing cold water on it from the kitchen sink. It was one of the only moments when the rest of the family had laughed together at him, and he'd been so mortified that he hadn't said a single word.

  Fergal tried flexing his arms to see if he had any muscles yet, and was surprised at the result. He pictured the girls he knew -the ones from the street who were always practising their Irish dancing up and down the pavement and the older ones who slouched to school with greasy ponytails, looking like they hadn't gone to bed, and sometimes said hello to him. He knew he preferred the company of girls - for one thing, they never tried to beat him up. And they weren't that interested in sport, except for newspaper pictures of George Best arriving at Belfast Airport, looking every inch the movie star. Fergal had agreed that George was gorgeous, but the girls had fallen silent, before giggling and staring at him, so he hadn't said anything more.

  In school he overheard the fellas all the time talking about which girls they fancied and what they were going to do to them. They had to be careful enough, though - the sexiest girls always happened to be the kid sisters of local boxing-champion hard men. It was much safer to fantasise about the girls on television. When the first episodes of Wonder Woman had aired, there had been pandemonium. 'Did you see Wonder Woman's tits last night? She can fucking save me any time!' They'd gone on and on, swapping details of what they would do to her if she ever turned up in their bedrooms on the way to save somebody's life. If anyone actually went out with a real girl, there would be a steward's inquiry - 'Did you buck her? Did ye?' - until the chanting started, 'Mickey got the diddy last night!' This seemed to be on a par with discovering the cure for cancer.

  Fergal wanted to fit in, but this was yet another subject from which he felt desperately disconnected. He watched in mild amazement, laughing along nervously, as one particularly animated boy mimed 'sticking it up' So-and-so, thrusting his crotch wildly back and forth. Fergal pictured himself kissing a girl he sometimes saw walking to mass - surely it couldn't be too difficult? -but the image quickly evaporated into nothing. He orbited the conversation from a safe distance, trying to appear interested and wondering whether he was the only one amongst all these fellas who thought about - well, about other fellas.

  Fergal had developed a crush on a lad in school, Stevie Barry. The first time he saw him, he thought maybe his mother had slipped one of her tablets into his tea that morning. Everything seemed to move into slow motion. Stevie Barry was a sports star and, inevitably and unfortunately, was friends with the twins. Fergal found himself following him around just to watch the way he walked. If he was playing hurling, Fergal would try to catch a glimpse of him in his shorts from the relative safety of the crowd. He thought Stevie had the most incredible legs, like tree trunks. Sometimes, at the end of a match, the fellas would take their jerseys off and as Stevie walked past, with his sweat-soaked jersey tied around his waist, Fergal saw up close the beginnings of what would be a very hairy and muscular chest. It was enough to make him break out in a sweat, his heart beating so hard it felt like it was wearing Doc Marten boots. It wasn't long before the guilt would
kick in, though, and Fergal would force himself to think about a girl with her top off - but somehow it just didn't have the same effect. Late at night, when he couldn't sleep, Fergal allowed himself to think that Stevie felt the same way about him - that they would secretly meet under the cover of night, and kiss in the moonlight near the deserted school pitches. But Fergal knew this would never, ever happen.

  Far too many thoughts jostled for position in his mind. Maybe I'm a freak. Why can't I just like girls? Why do I want to... to kiss him, every time I see him? What the fuck is wrong with me? He thought that maybe he should talk to a priest about it - confession boxes were supposed to be confidential after all. He constantly worried about what these thoughts meant. There were all kinds of names for it - but there was no way he thought they could apply to him.

  Now that they were in their final year, the headmaster had set up a series of mortifying sex-education classes, in an effort to give the boys a sense of maturity. The teacher - an anorexic priest from the South called Father Clancy - ended up sending half the class into the corridor for disruption within the first ten minutes. He ranted about the sins of the flesh, with his eyes nervously shut, and informed the class that 'pleasuring the self' was an active waste of God's seed, which should only be spilled within marriage. He ended each lesson by getting everyone to chant, 'God can see everything! God can see everything! Especially in the dark!' Fergal prayed it wasn't true. He'd had two dreams in a row that made him blush if he saw Stevie in school.

  A few days before, he'd been trying to get home the back way - someone in his year had issued him with yet another death threat - and had unexpectedly discovered Stevie pissing against a telegraph pole behind the school. Fergal had felt like a rabbit caught in headlights. Try as he might, he couldn't stop staring at the way Stevie confidently held his penis in one hand as he nonchalantly drained himself. His trousers were completely undone at the waist and pulled down so he could cup his hairy balls with his other hand, eyes shut, whistling, with a big, broad smile of relief. Fergal's heart hammered his throat. He tried his best not even to blink as Stevie finally shook himself dry, did up his trousers and wandered off. Fergal was erect and uncomfortable all the way home and, to his horror, had developed a large wet patch in the front of his trousers - he pulled his shirt out to hide it and hurried straight to the bathroom that was, miraculously, free.