Authors: Paul Murray
‘Morgan Bellamy,’ Crinkly-Hair is reading from the label. ‘I thought you said your name was Barry.’ She lifts her eyes to
Barry challengingly. Lollipop is hotter but Crinkly-Hair is sexy too, Carl thinks, he would ride her if the other one wouldn’t
do it.
‘Barry is my middle name,’ Barry tells her. ‘Nobody calls me Morgan except my grandparents.’
‘Where did you get these?’
‘The doctor prescribed them for me. But now I don’t need them any more.’
‘Oh, you’re cured, are you?’
‘That’s right,’ Barry says, smiling at her. She tries to stop herself smiling back at him but she can’t. ‘So what do you think?
I’ll give you this entire bottle for thirty euro. That’s only fifteen each,’ he says to Lollipop, trying to bring her into
it. But she hangs back and doesn’t speak.
‘We don’t have any money,’ Crinkly-Hair says.
‘Or I’ll give you five for five,’ Barry says, deliberately not looking at Carl while he is saying this. ‘This really is a
great offer, ladies. Normally you can’t get this stuff without a prescription. Here, take a look.’ He takes the tube back
from Crinkly-Hair and pours some of the little skin-coloured discs out onto his palm and holds it out. Crinkly-Hair hovers
over it, like she’s breathing in the smell of the pills, though they don’t smell of anything. Then suddenly light flashes
over them. Barry folds up his hand. A car comes up the driveway, a grown-up face suspicious in the window as it goes past.
Lollipop tweaks her friend’s elbow. ‘We should go,’ she murmurs. Her voice is low and soft like cat’s fur.
Crinkly-Hair nods. ‘It’s getting late,’ she says, and steps back.
‘Wait,’ Barry says. ‘Why don’t you take a couple of these, as free samples? I’ll give you my number, and if you like them
I can get you some more.’ He holds out the pills. The girls look at him, swaying slightly from side to side.
‘Or, okay, why don’t you give me your numbers, and I can call you to see if you changed your mind?’ He takes out his phone.
Carl takes out Morgan Bellamy’s phone and flips it open too. He points it at Lollipop but doesn’t speak. She gazes back at
him, biting her bottom lip gently.
‘Okay,’ Barry shuts his phone without stopping smiling. ‘How about this, how about we just come and meet you tomorrow? You
two are in St Brigid’s, aren’t you?’
The two of them look sideways at each other then back at Barry.
‘How about we come and meet you after school, and we can talk about it some more. Maybe we can work out a better deal. Like
if you don’t have enough money right this second, we can work something out. How about behind Ed’s, say we meet you there,
at four o’clock?’
The girls swap glances again and shrug their shoulders.
‘So see you tomorrow?’ Barry calls after them as they walk off down the driveway.
‘Definitely,’ Crinkly-Hair says, without looking back. Then she and Lollipop burst into giggles again.
‘Fucking St Frigid’s bitches,’ Barry says, when they have passed out of sight.
What the fuck are you doing? Why were you trying to give away our drugs?
Carl wants to shout. But instead he just says, ‘Is that stuff true? About diets?’
‘I read about it on the Internet,’ Barry says. As they walk down the driveway back to the road, he starts telling Carl how
in this thing he read these lads were dealing it and making serious cash. ‘Think about it, dude. All birds ever talk about
is their fucking weight. They’ll go mental for this shit. Those two totally would have bought some, if that bloke hadn’t driven
past. I’ll bet you anything they’ll be there tomorrow. And say they bring their friends, I bet we could sell all of these
and more.’
But why does he want to sell them? Why doesn’t he just want to snort them with Carl? Wasn’t that the plan? This is the way
Barry’s brain works though, new ideas are coming all the time, turning into plans. Carl has no ideas, no plans; he is just
carried along on Barry’s like a piece of plastic on the sea.
‘I wonder if we could get more from Morgan,’ Barry is saying. ‘Like we could offer him a cut. Or there must be other people
in school – or shit, junior school! I bet there’s loads of kids with prescriptions down there that…’
Carl tunes him out. He flips open Morgan’s phone and presses
a button. Lollipop-Lips appears and gazes darkly, velvetly, out at him, biting her bottom lip, swaying from side to side.
Then she freezes. Then she is there again, gazing, biting, swaying.
Now they have left the village behind, the shopping malls and pubs and restaurants, to go up a sleeping avenue with neat trimmed
hedges and black SUVs. Carl feels the night become heavy again and knows that this time there will be no fighting it, it will
keep getting heavier and heavier as he gets nearer to the house that is his house until it has dragged him all the way into
tomorrow.
‘… genius of diet pills,’ Barry is saying very quickly beside him. He is excited: maybe he is thinking about the US Army jeep
on eBay. ‘You don’t just buy them for a night out. You take them every day. And also, it’s
girls
. When do you ever see girls down in the park, buying drugs off knackers? Never. It’s a totally untapped market. I swear to
God, we’re going to be rich! Fucking
rich
!’ He grins at Carl, and waits for Carl to grin back.
‘Show us them a second,’ Carl says. Barry hands him the tube, chuckling some more. Carl opens it and pours the pills into
his palm. Then, as hard as he can, he flings them away into the air. Pills skitter along the road, bounce off car roofs, pelt
softly into the grass.
Barry is stunned. For a minute he can’t even speak. Then he says, ‘What the fuck did you do that for?’
Carl keeps walking. There is a sour fire burning in him the colour of dried blood.
‘You fucking
twat
,’ Barry says, ‘you spa, now what are we going to say to those girls tomorrow?’
Carl raises his palm and smacks Barry flat on the ear. Barry gasps and staggers sideways. ‘What’s the matter with you, you
psycho?’ he cries, clutching his head. ‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’
It’s tomorrow. Skippy’s bare-legged at the edge of the pool, chlorine and earliness stinging his eyes. Outside the morning
is a grey fuzz, the first shapes just beginning to emerge from it. On either side of Skippy, boys are lined up, their white
Seabrook College swimming caps making them look like clones with the school crest stamped on their bald heads. Then the whistle,
and before his mind even realizes, his body’s thrown itself forward and into the water. Instantly a thousand blue hands reach
for him, seize him, pulling him down – he catches his breath, fights them off, scrabbles his way to the surface –
Breaking through, he emerges into a commotion of colour and noise – the yellow plastic roof, the crash and foam of the other
swimmers, an arm, a goggled head thrown sideways, Coach like a gnarled tree trunk bending over the water, clapping his hands
and shouting
Let’s go let’s go
and in the lanes around Skippy the boys like disobedient reflections stealing ahead, disappearing behind their wakes. Everyone
hurtling for the wall! But the water grapples against him, the bottom of the pool is magnetic and it’s tugging him down again,
down to where…
The whistle goes. Garret Dennehy comes in first, right behind him Siddartha Niland. In the seconds after, the others slide
up alongside them, lean back against the wall, gasping, lifting off their goggles. Skippy’s still back in the middle of the
pool.
‘Come on, Daniel, for Christ’s sake, you’re like an old granny walking in the park!’
Three times a week, at 7 a.m., training for one hour. Count yourself lucky, the Senior team trains every morning and Saturdays
too. Breaststroke, backstroke, butterfly, crawl, back and
forth through the blue chemicals; repetitions on the tiles, crunches and squats, till every muscle is burning.
‘Being a great athlete is not just about natural ability,’ Coach likes to shout, pacing up and down along the poolside as
you squirm through your sets. ‘It’s about discipline, and it’s about commitment.’ So if you miss a session, you’d better have
a good excuse.
Afterwards, the team huddles shivering by the doorway of the changing room, hands pressed under armpits. When you get out
of the water the air feels cold and nothingy. Your arm moves and it moves against nothing. You speak and the words disappear
instantly.
Coach wraps and unwraps the cord of the whistle around his hand, everyone gathered round him like the Apostles with Jesus
in old paintings. If you look closely you can see how his body’s all twisted up even when he’s standing still. ‘You lads did
good work on Saturday. But we can’t afford to rest on our laurels. The next meet is on 15 November. That might sound like
a long way away. All the more reason for us to work hard and keep our momentum going. I want to see us in the semi-finals.’
He tosses his head towards the changing room. ‘Okay, off you go.’
The showers never feel like they’re making you clean. The tiles are lined with scuzz, the footbath half-full of brackish water;
hair shivers in grey clumps in the grating, like drowned mermaids.
‘You swam like a turd today, Juster,’ Siddartha says. ‘What’s the story? Were you up late last night bumming Van Doren?’
Skippy mumbles something about pulling a muscle at the meet.
Siddartha wrinkles up his nose, sticks his upper teeth over his lip and makes the kangaroo noise: ‘
Tcch-tcch-tcch
,
I think I pulled a muscle at the meet
. Well, you’d better speed up. Just because you fluked through on Saturday doesn’t mean you’ve got a right to a permanent
place on the team.’
‘Don’t mind him,’ Ronan Joyce says, when Siddartha turns round. ‘Dickhead.’
But Skippy doesn’t mind him: the pill he took when he woke
up takes care of that. The sleepy feeling threads through him, wrapping around him like a blanket. Noises, images, the things
people say, come to him all broken up and slowed down; the needly water of the shower, hitting his body, turning from cold
to hot, he hardly notices, nor when he steps out again into the freezing changing room.
Ruprecht and the others are already eating by the time he gets to the Refectory. Monstro is behind the counter, ladling scrambled
eggs like some kind of giant infection from a steel vat. The food in the Ref is always gross, the cheapest stuff they can
get. Today even the toast is burnt.
Crowd-cheering noises from Geoff as he sits down. ‘This is very exciting, sports fans – we’ve just been joined by champion
swimmer Daniel Juster, direct from his gruelling training regime! How are you feeling today, champ?’
‘Sleepy.’
A chorus of baa’s proceeds from a far corner as Muiris de Bhaldraithe, Seabrook’s biggest bogger and self-alleged lynchpin
of the clandestine Real IRA Juniors, Dublin Brigade, enters the room.
Scccrrrrcccchh, scccrrrrcccchhh
, Ruprecht meticulously scrapes the burnt from his toast.
‘ “Sleepy.” That’s top athlete Daniel “Skippy” Juster, ladies and gentlemen.’
Scccrrrrcccchh, scccrrrrcccchhh, scccrrrrcccchhh
, goes Ruprecht’s toast. Skippy stares into his breakfast as if it’s appeared out of nowhere.
‘I could probably be a top athlete if I wanted to,’ Mario puts in carelessly. ‘It’s just that I don’t want to.’
‘Oh yeah, Mario, that’s why,’ Dennis says.
‘Up yours, Hoey, that
is
why. For your information, this summer two different Premiership teams rang me up to offer me trials.’
‘The Premiership of masturbating,’ Dennis says.
‘If there was a Premiership of masturbating, you would be David Beckham,’ Niall adds.
Seizing an imaginary microphone, Dennis adopts a limp
Estuary accent: ‘Masturbating’s changed a lot since I were a lad, Brian. In my day, we masturbated for the sheer love of it.
Day and night we did it, all the kids on our estate, masturbating on the old waste ground, masturbating up against the wall
of the house… I remember me mam coming out and shouting, “Stop that masturbating and come in for your tea! You’ll never amount
to anything if all you think about is masturbating!” Masturbating crazy we were. Your young masturbators today, though, it’s
all about the money, it’s all about agents and endorsements. Sometimes I worry that the masturbating’s in danger of being
squeezed out altogether.’
‘Hey, Skip, what was the hotel like on Saturday?’ Geoff asks. ‘Did you have a minibar?’
‘No.’
‘Was there a hot tub?’
Scccrrrrcccchh! Scccrrrrcccchhh! Scccrrrrcccchhh!
‘Jesus, Ruprecht, what the hell are you doing?’ Skippy rounds on him.
‘Burnt toast is a carcinogen,’ Ruprecht replies placidly, continuing his excoriation.
‘A what?’ says Geoff.
‘It gives you cancer.’
‘Toast gives you cancer?’ Mario says.
‘Giving us cancer would actually be a step up for this place,’ Dennis says, looking around splenetically at the Ref.
‘Car-SIN-oh-jen,’ Geoff repeats slowly.
Scccrrrrccccccrrrrcccchhh
, goes the knife on the bread, then Skippy grabs Ruprecht’s plump wrist. He looks up in surprise.
‘It’s annoying,’ Skippy says, embarrassed.
The bell goes. Potato-Head Tomms rises and claps his hands for them all to carry their trays over to the trolleys. ‘I just
have to get something from my locker,’ Skippy tells the others. It’s 8.42, the corridors are full of puffy-eyed boys in coats,
hurrying to check-in. News of Saturday’s swim meet has spread: as he makes his way against the tide to the basement steps,
people he’s never
spoken to are nodding to him in acknowledgement; others punch him on the arm or stop to say congratulations.
‘Hey, well done on the other night, Juster.’
‘Here, heard about your race. Nice one, man.’
‘Good job, Juster, when’s the semi-final?’
If you’re used to people looking past or through or most often over you then the attention is pretty strange. Now two guys
from the low streams, Darren Boyce and someone else whose name Skippy isn’t even sure of, break free from the shoals to approach
him. Darren is smiling and holding out his arms – then at the last minute he shoves his friend so he clatters into Skippy
and sends him crashing into the wall; they laugh and move off in the other direction.