Authors: Kevin Brennan
September also brought the end of the holiday season and the beginning of the school term. Overnight I had more work, more urgent work, more stressed out housewives paying more attention to their ever demanding offspring than the path of their vehicles and more gobshite kids sprinting across the road in front of me without once taking their eyes off their friends on the other side.
The changes in my job lessened the amount of time I spent with Tramp and the changes in my life meant that I had more to say to him. I grew to cherish my soul-searching sessions in his company, enhanced all the more by the notably positive effect I was having on him. I knew that he had grown to be delighted to see me bump my bike up onto the path beside him.
The second Wednesday of October was a cold one. My first run of the day was high road south, incorporating a pick-up from Eirtail in Dundrum Business Park.
The receptionist, Jenny, was an attractive dark haired girl who was refreshingly friendly and appeared to be genuine. I had had a five minute chat with her the previous Friday while being kept waiting for an envelope that had sown the seeds of a decision to take a forward step on my path to recovery.
This time I was kept waiting ten minutes, an eternity in the normal course of things during which I would have called the base looking to pull out at least twice.
However, it was a pleasurable time that led me to make a final decision, bringing me a thrill that I had almost forgotten I had ever experienced before. I was going to ask Jenny out on a date!
The decision, of course, caused panic to attack every nerve in my body, turning me to jelly instantly. All of a sudden the cool, calm, collected me that had made a positive decision turned into a blithering idiot with a stupid nervous giggle where once there had been witty observation.
Thankfully the package arrived shortly thereafter, presenting me with the opportunity to ask the hopeful question - being in a position to grab the package and get the hell out of there should the reply not be the desired one. All I had to do was say the words.
Fate seemed to give me a nod of encouragement as the bringer of the package turned on his heel and high tailed back in the direction he had come with more than a modicum of urgency, leaving me and Jenny alone for that one moment when the package would be exchanged. All I had to do was say the words.
“There you go.” she said.
Oh my God, I thought, she’s looking at you like you’re a weirdo.
My confidence had been squashed and I took the package in my left hand without saying a word. Agonisingly, she turned back to some paperwork the second I had taken the package
off her.
Oh, shit, Sean. Ask her now. Go on, I told myself.
“I was wondering.”
It was a minor miracle that the meek and feeble shaky voice even made her look up.
“If we could maybe go for a drink and talk some more about the…” My voice trailed off as I realised to my horror that I couldn’t remember what we had been talking about. Jenny mercifully ended this latest bout of nerve induced torment.
“Yes, sure!”
“Cool! I’ll phone you here later. Looking forward to it already! See ya.”
I straightened up and strengthened with each step, such was the inhalation of air and confidence gulped down en-route to bike, which was duly wheelied the full length of the car park in primeval triumphalism, happy in the knowledge that my next date, should she have been looking out the window, would have seen the whole thing.
I was on cloud nine that day. I wheelied away from every building I left and “stoppied” up to every red light that caught me. The bike seemed to throw itself through every gap from one side of the traffic to the other at maximum speed with me sometimes up to four cars ahead of offended drivers by the time they got around to beeping their frustration at me.
I was in such good form that I pounced on every opportunity for mischief.
I managed to sneak up behind Seven Leo at the lights at the IMI on the Sandyford Road and scared the shite out of him with a beep and a bang of the top box.
I was about to pull away from Heron House in Sandyford Industrial Estate when I noticed Paddy Murray coming down Corrig Road with his left indicator on. I cut across a patch of grass to get my front wheel on the footpath with my back wheel in a small muddy puddle. I waved frantically at Paddy as he made his turn into the car park. He braked and swung towards me.
Like a flash I lowered my left hand to engage the clutch, clunked the bike into first gear, used two fingers of my right
hand to squeeze the front brake as hard as possible while using the rest of my hand to nail the throttle wide open while releasing the clutch, spinning the back wheel. The wheel emptied the puddle and a considerable amount of its mucky container all over the approaching Paddy. He was destroyed, and considerably less than impressed! He chased me all the way down Blackthorn Drive until I turned off for Leopardstown.
I managed to sweep Charlie’s foot out from under him at a red light in Ranelagh on the way in, again resulting in a slight chase.
I managed to sweep Charlies foot out from under him at a red light in Ranelagh on the way in, again resulting in a slight chase.
One of the high points of that afternoon was managing to sneak up on sixty-nine Darren on Fitzwilliam Square.
It takes that little extra prowess to sneak up on a woolly willy, with them being physically active and not having engine noise to camoflage the noise of an approach, and Darren was a particularly sharp specimen!
I had to spy him from a distance, give the throttle one last blip, taking my left hand off the clutch and aiming it at the small of his back, leaving it loose for the split second as it made contact before pushing with all my strength, locking the arm and then nailing the throttle wide open, accelerating the cyclist to a speed way too fast for his bike in seconds flat. His roars of abusive language were like a herald of victory to me.
I managed to snatch the Gizzards keys at the bottom of Merrion Square, distracting him by telling him that I’d never seen the clock on the side of Holles Street hospital tell the wrong time before (the clock, of course, had not faltered).
I even made Vinno jump with a nudge at Leeson Bridge.
I had an amazing lunch in the base, loud as any of them with loads to say about my many pranks of the morning. I didn’t tell them about Jenny though. I was only going to tell Tramp about her. I couldn’t wait to see Tramp, and for Tramp to see me, for surely he would feel the hope that radiated from me having taken that step forward. Maybe he would even feel hope himself. Maybe I would be able to get him indoors for the winter!
Aidan, by request, dispatched two Finglas bound jobs to me during lunch, to which was added a Phibsboro, a Blanchards-town and a Dunshaughlin before I left the base. Dunshaughlin counted as a country job, with a good fast road covering the 12 odd miles from Blanch to there making the money earned versus the time taken very favourable. I was going to make good money and get to see Tramp! This was one great day!
I had approached Tramp’s corner at something akin to twice the legal speed limit. A glance revealed the absence of the now so familiar figure at the corner and sparked a wave of panic to wash over me.
Easy, Sean, he’s obviously in the shelter, said the voice of logic within me. Easing off the throttle and letting the uphill gradient slow me - always remembering that braking costs money - dropping down two gears while focusing on the shelter.
Then I began to truly panic. He wasn’t at the corner, he wasn’t in the shelter. He was gone. He had never been anywhere else. I guess it was the optimist in me that started to concoct a scenario to explain his absence but was instantly quashed. He could only be dead.
My happy plans vanished, replaced with the cruel crushing misery of loss that kicks the shit out of everything that makes life worth living. It doesn’t matter what you attach yourself to in life, it’s going to lead to loss. I dropped one more gear, as a huge wave of despair overwrote every hurt I have ever suffered. I dropped another gear and wrenched the throttle wide open as a volcano of torment erupted from the bottom of my gut.
Up a gear, through that gap, wide-open, pain, loss, rage, up a gear, narrow gap!
Straight through, more throttle, another gap.
Up a gear.
Beep after beep after beep.
All beeping at another crazy courier going too fast through traffic.
None of them saw the tears.
None of them heard the screams.
None of them knew that the first good thing that had happened to this lunatic in a long time had been overshadowed so by loss.
None of them knew that he had just tasted his first taste of the grief that death brought with it and, even though it was only a stray dog that had died, and that he wasn’t dealing with it very well.
As I accustomed myself to the rigours of life as a courier, I became less and less comfortable living with Eoin and Marie. Their warm friendship and lovely house was the perfect refuge for the broken hearted wreck that I was when I moved back to Dublin, but deserved better than to have that wreck abuse it when his path to recovery had veered definitively in the direction of wildness.
I was drinking with the lads more and more - and not just on Fridays. It often happened that a few of the single couriers, upon finding themselves in similar company having finished their day’s work and converging on the base, would decide to go for “one”. This would then be broadcasted via Channel Two, should anyone else wish to join them.
I finished up in town about half the time, and whenever I did I was presented with the choice: go home alone and feel sorry for myself or go to the pub with the lads and have a buzz. There was no contest; the pub won every time! The problem with going to the local during the week, however, was that if you left your bike in the yard, you would not be able to get it until half ten the following morning when the pub opened, thereby missing two
hour’s work and, even more damaging to your earnings, pissing off your base controller. This led to many Wednesday evenings dilemmas when half way through the second pint there was the constant decision of “Should I stay or should I go?”
If I was a good boy I’d go home after finishing this. At a push, I might have another one and then go home. Maybe somebody would declare a session, as so often happened, while I was having the next one, and we’d all go back to theirs, get the bikes offside and carry on. Maybe I’d stay here if I found someone else to leave their bike in the yard to share the shit in work tomorrow after a big session tonight.
At times, it was a battle between the sensible side and the alcohol induced foolishness whether to leave the bike here or just go home. My sensible side also had apathy stacked against it, however, and it lost out many times.
I arrived back in Eoin and Marie’s in my filthy, often soaking wet, motorbike gear in more and more drunken conditions, often immediately skinning up and getting stuck into whatever alcohol I could find in the house.
Then I started to answer the call for the pub no matter where I finished up.
Soon, every time there was a session, there was Shy Boy! Sometimes I would be out on consecutive nights with totally different groups of people! My circle of friends widened considerably; there were plenty of non-couriers in the pub every night that welcomed me as one of their own, as well as the increasing amount of couriers that I sessioned with all over the city. I slept on sofas and floors from Darndale to Dundrum and everywhere in between, making friends and drinking buddies all the way.
One Friday night at a packed session in Vinno’s flat in Windy Arbour, I got talking to his flatmate - who, to my surprise, turned out to be his lodger, since Vinno owned the property. He was a mousey civil servant working in some department I was too drunk to even attempt to commit to memory who thought that Vinno was the best landlord ever, not least because of the people he brought home with him. Harry, as he was called,
told me that he would really miss the place after he moved to Waterford.
“Throw over those skins pleash, Harry an’ I’ll get a joint toge- You’re what!”
“I’m going to mish thish plashe.”
Two thoughts hit me like bolts of lightning: firstly, Harry was as drunk as I was and secondly, there was going to be a vacant room here, in the middle of everything. Here where there was a garage downstairs, safe and dry and full of tools with a landlord who knew bikes inside out: - and what a landlord! Here, so frequently visited by brother couriers. Here, where you could smoke what you wanted as long as you didn’t bogart it.
“When you goin’?”
“Two weeks.”
“Has he anyone elshe lined up for your room?”
“Don’t think sho.”
“Back in a minute.” I found Vinno in the kitchen with a group of couriers, none of whom worked in Lightning, hanging on his every word.
“Well, noh all of us piss away our claim money. I goh a letter off the job sayin’ tha’ I was a base controller an’ brou’ i’ to the bank. I learned a few years ago tha’ banks judge people by the traffic through their account, so I’ve always lodged me cheques every week instead o’ just cashin’ them so, wi’ the claim as me deposit I goh a mortgage an bought the gaff!”