I was going through my files and came across this fragment. The novel was to be called The Chant. A schoolyard chant was a prominent plot device in the horror story that I wrote during lockdown and blogged recently.
I can't remember anything about this planned novel. I'm increasingly frustrated with stories about "the town with a dark secret", because they seem like escapism from the real horror of our time: that every place is increasingly like every other, and that there is nothing special about anywhere.
Anyway, here it is. I notice that my protagonist changes from Damian to Damien during the course of the chapter. Hey ho.
Damian just muttered something. It was pretty obvious to anybody who looked at him that he was looking for his wallet. He didn’t feel any need to announce it further, especially to someone as shady-looking as this.
“Pardon?” the man asked, wide-eyed. He was a scrawny, dishevelled looking fellow in a battered tracksuit jacket and jeans. He looked to be in his late twenties.
“I said It’s OK”, said Damian, trying to suppress feelings of panic. The nasal tones of Axl Rose filled the air of the pub. It was almost deserted and the two of them were alone in one shady corner.
“That’s not an answer”, said tracksuit jacket. “Why don’t you talk to me? I might be able to help.”
There was nothing else for it. Damian got on his hands and knees and began to look under the couch he’d been sitting on. There was only the narrowest of spaces underneath and he had to press his face against the carpet. “I doubt that”, he said.
“Well, you’re wrong”, said the man.
Some about his tone made Damian look up. The man in the tracksuit jacket was holding a brown wallet in the air. His wallet.
“Give me that” Damian said, still on his hands and knees.
“Sure” said the man, pleasantly. He extended the wallet towards Damian.
Damian snatched it, rose awkwardly to a semi-standing position, and sat down. He opened it and looked inside.
Passport. Driving license. Teachers’ union card. Credit card. Bank card. Library card. A fifty and a twenty. A few newspaper clippings. Everything was there.
“What the hell are you doing, taking my wallet?” asked Damian, moving back a little on the seat, getting ready to make a run for it if the guy got aggressive.
“What is anyone ever doing with someone else’s wallet?” asked the man. His face was thin and boyish, with fine copper-coloured stubble flecking his jaws and chin. The most noticeable feature on his face were his extraordinarily bright blue eyes. They gave him a waif-like look. Or even a slightly unbalanced look. He was rather handsome, and there was a gentle smile on his well-chiselled lips.
Damian was nonplussed. What the heck were you meant to say in a situation like this?
“Why did you give it back to me?” he asked.
The man laughed, and his laughter took Damian aback. It was a natural, easy, mirthful kind of laugh. But those blue eyes still shone with a rather disturbing light.
“Because I liked the look of you”, the man said.
Silence fell between them. By now, Guns ‘n’ Roses had been followed by some eighties tune that Damian recognised as having featured in Crocodile Dundee, but couldn’t name. A barmaid was clearing away the remains of a dinner on a nearby table.
Damian wondered what this guy could be up to. Had he copied the details from his bank cards, scanned them using some kind of machine? But why wouldn’t he just have kept the bloody wallet, in that case? Was it all part of some elaborate con?
“What makes you think I won’t report you to the guards?” Damian asked.
The man shrugged. He didn’t seem in the least concerned. Or offended. “Go ahead”, he said. “Your word against mine. Do you know how many murders happened in this neighbourhood last year? Three. Do you think the guards care about a stolen wallet that’s not stolen anymore?”
Damian shrugged, then realised he had simply copied the man’s gesture and felt strangely embarrassed. “Maybe, maybe not”, he said. “What the heck am I supposed to do? Buy you a drink?”
The man laughed again, apparently very pleased at the suggestion. He seemed even more boyish when he laughed. “That’s a good idea. I don’t drink alcohol, but I wouldn’t mind a 7-Up.”
Damian’s sense of the absurd had been awoken. Besides, he couldn’t help feeling grateful that the man had returned his wallet, ridiculous though this might be. He gestured to the barmaid, who came to the table, carrying the tray with the finished dinner on it.
“Yeah?”
“An Erdinger and a 7-Up, please.”
“We don’t have 7-Up. Only Sprite.”
Damian looked at the man in the tracksuit jacket, who nodded.
“Fine. An Erdinger and a Sprite.”
The barmaid wandered away, without so much as a curious glance at the two ill-matched companion. Perhaps they were not so ill-matched as Damian might have liked to believe. After all, he hadn’t shaved that morning and his own hair was quite ruffled.
“Thanks man.”
“You’re welcome. Man. What’s your name?”
“Damien”, said the man in the tracksuit jacket.
“That’s my—“
“That’s your name, yeah, I know. Damien Spencer.”
“Nice to see you had a look through my wallet”, said Damien.
“I’m Damien Clifford” said the other Damien.
Silence fell between them for a moments. Damien looked out towards the bar. The Lady Morgan pub was having a quiet Tuesday night. A group of students were gathered around one of the tables in the middle of the floor. A man was doing a crossword at the bar. A mechanical ship was eternally swaying from side to side in a long glass box full of sparkling blue fluid, halfway between the two Damiens and the bar. It was a rather nondescript pub, but Damien liked it.
“So can I call you Daimo?” asked Damien, smiling in a way that was supposed to ironic and knowing and rather weary.
The other Damien frowned, appearing irritated for the first time. “I also hated being called Daimo”, he said. “You can call me Clifford if you want. Why do you assume anyone calls me Daimo?”
“I don’t” said Damien, but he was lying. Daimo did seem to him like the kind of street nickname that a guy like this might pick up. “Fine. Clifford it is. Why did you give me back my wallet, Clifford?”
Clifford was silent for a few moments, watching Damien keenly. Yes, those bright blue eyes were rather disturbing, even though there was no obvious sign of malice in the way Clifford looked at him.
“Because I liked you” he said, eventually. “And because you read poetry.”
Damien looked at the book which was opened, face-down, on the pub table in front of him. It was John Betjeman’s Collected Poems.
“Poetry fan, are you?” asked Damien. He tried not to sound ironic this time, still feeling embarrassed about the Daimo thing.
“Yeah” said Clifford, nodding. “I looked through that when you were in the bathroom. Didn’t like it so much, but it takes a while to get into a new poet, doesn’t it?”
“I guess so.”
“Well, that’s what I find” said Clifford, warming to his theme. “Dylan Thomas, I like. Do you like Dylan Thomas?”
“Not so much” said Damien. “Apart from ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’.”
“Rage, rage against the dying of the light”, quoted Clifford, smiling eagerly. “And I like W.B. Yeats and W.H. Auden and Philip Larkin and Patrick Kavanagh. I love poetry, I do.”
The barmaid appeared and set down their drinks in front of them. Damien plucked the twenty out of his wallet and handed it to her. “I’ll be back with your change”, she said, and glided away. Damien watched her go. She had a nice figure.
“I’m glad you like poetry” said Damien. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have a wallet.”
“It wasn’t just that” said Clifford, with a secretive smile. “I know you. I recognise you”.
“You do? Where from?”
“Not telling”.
Damien peered into this strange man’s face for an extended moment. It remained as strange to him as before.
It wasn’t so odd that Clifford recognised him. After all, Damien had lived in this suburb for the first fifteen years of his life.
“School?” asked Damien.
Clifford nodded.
“You’re younger than me” said Damien. “You must have been a few years behind me. And I left in fourth year.”
“I was in first year” said Clifford. “I remember you.”
“How come?”
Clifford shrugged. “You were a bit of a loner, weren’t you?”
“Not really.”
“I saw you on your own a lot.”
Was that true? It must have been, Damien supposed. He’d had friends in St. John Bosco’s, but they weren’t close friends. He often spent lunch-breaks sitting in the cafeteria and reading his book.
“I don’t remember you at all” said Damien, rather vengefully. Dammit, he hadn’t been a loner.
“Well, why would you notice a first year?” asked Clifford.
“I still think it’s weird you remember me” said Damien.
“I’m the kind of person who notices things.”
You look it, thought Damien, who couldn’t help flinching a little from the intensity of Clifford’s stare.
“Why did you leave Bozzer’s?” Bozzer’s was the local slang for St. John Bosco’s.
“My father died”, said Damien. “We went to live with my uncle. My mother was already dead when I was a baby.”
“That’s tough” said Clifford, unemotionally. “Where did you move to?”
“England”, said Damien. “Hull.”
“You don’t have a Yorkshire accent.”
“So I’m constantly told.”
“So what brings you back?”
“Actually I’m teaching” said Damien. “At Bozzer’s.”
Clifford laughed, took a sip of his Sprite, and laughed again. He seemed very pleased by this.
“Funny how it worked out that way” he said. “What do you teach?”
“English”, said Damien, wondering why he always cringed a little when he admitted this.
Clifford made a face. “I hated English class”, he said. “They ruined poetry for me for years and years.”
Damien was rather sick of hearing this. He wondered how exactly English teachers were supposed to not ruin poetry, or Shakespeare, or reading in general—other than by showing DVDs in every class and asking their students how the poems made them feel inside.
“Teachers have to teach”, he said. “It’s not supposed to be all fun.”
“Man, it wasn’t fun at all” said Clifford. “Where are you living?”
Damien hesitated to reply, and Clifford laughed out loud, not seeming in the least bit bothered. “Never mind”, he said. “Why would you tell the likes of me?”
“Well…”
“I know, I know”, said Clifford, reaching forward and patting Damien on the shoulder. “You can’t be in my line of work and expect people to tell you things like that. But you don’t have to worry.”
“No?”
“No. I never rob people I like.”
Now Damien laughed. Clifford had said it matter-of-factly, not as a joke.
“I’d better stay on your good side, then”, he said. “How about—“
“Peelers”, whispered Clifford, looking towards the bar. “Off-duty.”
Damien looked up. Two burly men were standing at the bar, dressed in jeans and crisp shirts.
Clifford was rising from the table. “Thanks for the drink”, he said. “See you around, Damien.”
“Sure” said Damien. He was still holding his wallet and he held it a little tighter as Clifford left the table and made for the exit, keeping as much as distance as possible between him and the off-duty guards, his head down.
Peelers? Peelers! That was one he’d completely forgotten!
Damien reached into his pocket and took out a thin, paper backed notebook. After a little bit more rummaging, he produced a felt-tip pen. He opened the notebook and wrote down Peelers. It was on a list with words like grupper, tanny and joxies.
Peeler, of course, wasn’t a word unique to Morganstown. It was a rather dated term for a policeman, well-known all over Ireland and Britain. But Damien never heard anyone actually use it in everyday speech—certainly not in Dublin, anyway.
With the exception of Morganstown, that was. Morganstown had its own small scattering of unique (or almost unique) slang. It wasn’t so much that you would notice it unless you were living there for some time. And even then, nobody ever seemed to remark upon it. Damien had searched the internet for references to this odd phenomenon, but there were none—apart from those that he had made himself.
Why that was, he couldn’t understand. Well, there were lots of things he couldn’t understand about the world.
He put the notebook back into his pocket, drained the last of his Erdinger, put his John Betjeman book into his knapsack, took one last appreciative look at the barmaid, and headed towards the door. Karma Chameleon was playing on the sound system and the off-duty guards were talking about rickshaws.
The town centre of Morganstown was almost deserted on this balmy September evening. A small knot of teenagers was standing outside the Orbit cinema, trading ritual insults and laughing. They didn’t seem all that rowdy.
Damien had always liked this town centre. The streets were broader than those of most Irish towns and suburbs. It didn’t give the same stifling sense of greyness as many Irish towns, since many of the buildings were painted or constructed in brighter colours. Even the shop-fronts seemed broader, brighter and friendlier than many other Irish towns and suburbs he’d been in. There were a fair amount of neon signs. Perhaps he shouldn’t like that, but he did. The green cross that flashes eternally outside McDuggan’s chemist had always seemed a cheerful sight to him.
And even some of the graffiti that was there in his boyhood was still there. Trish 74 was still carved above the street sign for Monaghan Street. Seeing it there made him feel strangely happy.
Yes, for all his anxieties about actually returning to St. John Bosco school, he was glad to be back in Morganstown. Things would work out. This was where he was supposed to be.
His eyes fell upon another street sign, in a shadowy lane that ran past the Home Heaven furniture shop. Culleton Row, it said.
Culleton Row led to Tanner Street, which ran onto the corner of the Morganstown Cemetery. And Morganstown Cemetery was where his mother and father were buried.
He hadn’t been to visit the graves since his mother’s funeral seven years ago. Of course, the cemetery would not be open this late. But it was a very easy business to hop over the low wall and railings. He’d done it several times in his youth, joining in ghost-story sessions with other kids.
Perhaps it was the three Erdingers that were sloshing around inside him, but it seemed like a good idea to pay an evening visit to his deceased parents. A few moments later, he was lowering himself into Morganstown Cemetery.
No comments:
Post a Comment