Dead dogs, p.10
Dead Dogs, page 10
Before I can say anything Dr Thorpe goes, ‘Can we have this conversation inside the house, please, Ted? It’s bad enough having your car parked in my drive without words like that being bandied about the place.’
The guard grins at me and Seán without any kind of humour. Great White Sharks are way heavier than you think and when you see them on wildlife programmes you can see how massive their heads are. They’ve got these big, fat, wide heads, all muscle and snaggle-teeth. The guard’s grinning head reminds me of this.
He looks at my Da and goes, ‘I have no objection to that. Do you?’
Da’s shaking his head and he’s saying, ‘God, no. Work away.’
Seán’s groaning goes up a notch and he starts spilling words from his worm-red lips. He’s saying, ‘I don’t want to. I don’t want to.’
Over and over again he says this until the guard goes, ‘We could get your Da down here too, Seán? Would you like that? Do you think he’d be happy?’
Seán’s voice stops working like all the air has been sucked out of his lungs. His lips wriggle for a second and then they press together and go pale. He shakes his head, once, deliberately.
Dr Thorpe steps aside and all the light and all the heat of his big house comes pouring down the throat of his hallway and empties out into dank of the night. Me and Seán go in past him with our heads bowed. Like slaves bent under iron chains, beaten and spiritless, the two of us step into the hall. We, me and Seán, are careful not to touch Dr Thorpe as we go by him. You can smell the scent of freshly-scrubbed skin coming off him, that and the permanent chemical reek of hairspray.
He smiles down at us and he says, ‘Welcome to my humble abode.’
Behind us the guard comes in and then my Da comes in and then Dr Thorpe is shutting the front door.
Dr Thorpe’s hallway extends off in front of us and everything is all mellow wood and beeswax and cream paint. Everything is from page fourteen of the Dulux colour scheme brochure. Everything is Barley Mist and Summer Oat and Buttermilk Sheen. Everything is off-white. It is the colour of baby vomit.
My Da is looking around and he’s going, ‘Very nice, Doctor. Very tasteful.’
Down the hall, where it opens up into the kitchen I can see the spot where I saw Dr Thorpe and that woman. Him lying on top of her. Her face bleeding. It all comes back and it’s like I’m going to throw up.
The dead meat smack of it.
Now there’s no sign of what happened. No blood. No sweat streaks on the floorboards. Nothing to suggest anything happened. It’s as though I imagined the whole thing.
Seán’s looking at me and his face is pale and lax.
Dr Thorpe shows us all into a side room. The room is a kind of study with shelves all around the walls and a desk and six or seven chairs set about the place. The shelves are crammed with books and on the desk there’s one of those brass lamps with the green glass hoods. The lamp is on and the glass glows the colour of cat eyes. There are golf trophies on nearly every flat surface and there’s a special plaque sitting on the desk next to the lamp. In the light the engraved lettering is all swilled with sepia. It reads Strawberry Fair Golf Classic Winner 2009 2010 2011. In the middle of the floor sits my gear bag, covered in dried muck and grass stains with my name inked in black on the red panelling.
I’m looking at the bag and then Dr Thorpe goes, ‘Gentlemen, if you could all take a seat we can clear this matter right up.’
Seán looks at me and I go, ‘I’d prefer to stand.’
Seán’s nodding and he folds his arms the way mine are folded.
Da sighs then and he says, ‘Don’t be stupid. Would you sit down for fuck’s sake.’
Then he seems to remember where he is and he goes, ‘Pardon my French.’
The guard slaps him on the shoulder like they’re suddenly best friends and he goes, ‘Don’t worry about it. This is very stressful for everyone.’
Then everyone else, except me and Seán, sits down.
Still standing, I go, ‘Should we not be doing this down at the barracks or something?’
Then everyone else, except me and Seán, shake their heads like I’ve started speaking in tongues.
The guard, with a sort of mockery gusting through his voice, goes, ‘Who exactly saw what here, lads?’
Seán’s not stupid and he knows we’re getting the piss taken out of us and I can feel him tensing up. He’s afraid and he’s angry and I can feel the potential in him.
Before Seán can say, or worse, do, anything, I’m saying, ‘I saw it. I saw him over there hitting and choking a girl.’
The doctor looks uncomfortable at this and under his breath I hear the word preposterous slink out from between his lips. He reaches up and adjusts the fall of his bathrobe and he crosses his bare, white ankles. He is wearing slippers. In his chair with his wet red robe he looks like a massive haematoma or a huge tick, swollen and bloated with blood.
The guard is rubbing his forehead and he’s going, ‘How did you manage to see this alleged incident?’
Talking quickly now, I’m going, ‘We came up along the driveway and we heard a noise. I looked in the letterbox—’
My Da explodes at this and his face is all wrinkled and red like a fresh scar. He says, ‘You did what? You were spying through a letterbox like some sort of pervert? Wait till I get you home.’
I’m shocked and I’m blinking at my Da and Seán brings his hands up to his face. I can’t believe my Da. I can’t believe he’s leaving me twisting in the wind like this.
Before I can say anything, before I can defend myself, Dr Thorpe goes, ‘Ted, I’m going to say this right now that I’m not going to press charges against these lads. I don’t think they meant any harm. I just want to know what they were doing on my doorstep.’
I’m looking from my Da to Dr Thorpe to the guard and then back. First one, then the other, then the other. It’s like my muscles are on a loop. I’m like some broken android, almost human but not quite.
I’m wondering, how the hell did this happen? How did it end up that me and Seán are the bad guys?
He’s not going to press charges against us?
The guard is looking at me and Seán now and he goes, ‘Why were you here, lads? The doctor says his gates were locked. What would make you climb over the wall? That’s trespass. You do realise that?’
He looks at Seán, Seán with his face buried in the crooked fingers of both hands, and his eyes narrow and he goes, ‘What have you been up to Mr Galvin?’
Seán begins to groan and the whole room, padded and walled with books and arch intellectualism, now makes echo to his inarticulate pain.
The guard is grinning again and his lips are hooked at the corners like a pike’s and he goes, ‘Are you going to tell me, Seán? If you tell me maybe we can help you.’
And Seán’s voice, all sticky and soft like marl, Seán’s voice comes between his fingers and he goes, ‘I did a bad thing. A really really bad thing.’
And just like that Dr Thorpe sits back in his chair and the guard smiles across at him. My Da is looking in disgust at Seán and in his head I know every atom of dislike he has towards him is bouncing off every other atom and making a supernova of bad feeling.
All of a sudden it’s like Dr Thorpe has won and we, me and Seán, have lost.
I’m really pissed off now and I snap at Dr Thorpe, ‘I know what I saw.’
And like someone out of Scooby Doo, I go, ‘You won’t get away with this.’
My Da is sitting forward in his chair and I can see he’s pissed off too but it’s the guard who says something. He says, ‘Let’s all calm down now for a minute. It’s obvious the boys are upset about whatever Seán here’s gotten up to.’
I’m turning from person to person and Seán’s no help buried behind the ramparts of his hands and I’m going, ‘You don’t understand. What I saw has nothing to do with Seán. I’m not making this up. I wouldn’t do that.’
Da goes, ‘Don’t, son.’
He says this at the exact same time as the guard goes, ‘Really? Mr Trustworthy all of a sudden, yeah?’
He leans forward in his chair and I can see Dr Thorpe start to smile as the guard goes, ‘Tell us what happened last summer.’
Remember when I said that I was grand and that Seán’s internal wiring was badly fused? Well that’s still true, definitely true, but I did get in a bit of trouble last summer. Not out of badness or anything. It was more a practical joke that got out of hand.
I worked in an office for the summer. An insurance place right on the Market Square. My Da knows the broker. Two other lads worked there. Both were doing honours degrees in business and something money spinning. They photocopied. They made coffee. They were patronised. They could run the place. They didn’t.
I do pretty well in Business in school. I hate doing hard sums but marketing and stuff like that I’m really good at. I don’t know what I’m going to do when I leave school. Probably something Englishy. After that I can take my degree and go to a bank for a job. With my English degree I can stand at a photocopier while the green lightsabre blade traverses beneath its glass and produces ever more faded copies of the original. Everything in an office is a copy of a copy of a copy. Nothing is ever original. If you’re really lucky you can fiddle with the finishing buttons on the photocopier until you figure out how to actually staple the copies as they’re vomiting out. This is a big deal. It can save you hours of pointless stapling and leave you free to produce ever more copies of Declaration A.
See also Declaration B.
See also Direct Debit Mandates.
I am a tongueless bell.
I am a waste of potential.
I have a certain smug satisfaction in knowing that I found the photocopier’s stapler before the Commerce students did. I am one rung higher up the corporate ladder than they are. One rung higher up and I’m still drowning in shit.
This happy little vista does naught for the nascent professionalism which a young buck like myself should nurture. Shortly before the end of the summer I’m let go. Nothing is said to Da except the work was drying up. Nothing was said but I’m pretty sure he knows.
The insurance place that I was let go from has a big plate glass window that looks out onto the Market Square. During the summer people move in a flux past it without ever looking in. An insurance place does not tend to attract window shoppers. I stand at the back of the office and I look out over the heads of six people sitting in cubicles and I watch other people walk in sunshine, oblivious to anyone in here. Outside the office, the people’s faces are angry, worried, smiling, blank. Human. Each couple that passes is a soap opera. Each individual a soliloquy.
There’s the young couple barely in their thirties. He’s carrying the shopping that has obviously been shopped for by her. His sky-blue T-shirt has darkened in a cobalt fan under the arms and he’s standing behind her as she stops to take something out of her purse. She can’t seem to stop talking and the look of hatred on his face is scary. Then she’s turning and then she’s kissing him on the cheek. His face is now a mask of bovine contentedness. But I remember the way he looked when her back was turned. He is an animal in a cage.
Then there’s the young fella who just came out of the hairdresser’s. He can’t be any more than ten or so and his arm makes a hard bony triangle over his head because he’s trying to get at something itchy down the back of his tracksuit top. His head is shaven down to almost stubble and his skin shows through pale and domed over his skull. He is small and thin and now his head looks too big for his body. With his angry little face and bundle of sticks body he looks like a cross between a skinhead and an Auschwitz victim. A conflation of opposites. His whole being is a contradiction in terms. With a complete lack of self-consciousness he stands in front of the plate glass window and looks at his reflection. His hand comes out of the back of his top and rubs delicately over the bristles of his head. He doesn’t see anyone in here and no one in here sees him. Except me.
The office works like this. A bank tells someone they need insurance to get a mortgage. This aforementioned someone comes to the insurance office and fills out a proposal form for Life and Serious Illness cover or Mortgage Protection or both, ensuring it’s signed and dated on the Xs.
See also Declaration A.
See also Declaration B.
See also Direct Debit Mandate.
Now, strictly speaking, just to get a quote from an insurance company not everything has to be filled in. You can leave out certain details. Not details like whether you’re on the verge of croaking from motor neuron disease or details like the fact that the tumour pulsing in your brain has just been diagnosed as inoperable. Not stuff like that. But to just get a quote you can leave out other details.
Usually underneath the personal details there’s a little empty field marked Occupation. This is there so that if someone like a scaffolder wants insurance the insurance company can screw them over because they work at a height. If the poor fuck falls three storeys off his scaffolding there’s a fair chance he’ll either be dead as dead can be or not really in any condition to continue working. In the industry this is called risk. Outside the industry this is still called risk. The insurance cover is there so that if he can’t meet the mortgage repayments through injury or falling from a height and impaling himself on rebar the bank still gets paid.
Financial Institutions 1: Everyone Else 0.
Myself and the business undergrads who work in the office collect up the proposals that are filled in. We photocopy them for the files. Then we either post them or fax them to the insurance company. This is what we do. All day every day. Some days you can actually feel your brain turning to sludge. I’m starting to find it difficult to make abstract connections anymore. My eyes are sore from the photocopier’s glare. Then I do something just to prove I can still change the routine, to prove I can still invent things. I do something that gets me fired.
Once more with feeling. This isn’t done out of badness and this isn’t anything like the stuff that Seán does.
There’s a stack of proposals left on the edge of a table to be photocopied and sent off. I know this because there’s a pink post-it stuck to the top one with the words PHOTOCOPY & SEND OFF written on it. Every day there’s another post-it curling up from the top of another pile of proposals and every day it says the same thing. You’d think we wouldn’t need instructions by now. The proposals are always a pleasing peach colour and the parts you fill in are all white squares for the BLOCK CAPITALS. Most people ignore the block capitals thing and simply scrawl the information across the boxes. Each proposal is a smudged mess of blue or black ink. The pink post-it though is always clearly printed in BLOCK CAPITALS.
Most days as I’m working through the stack I check some of the proposals. Mainly I do this because otherwise I’ll go insane. I just run my eye over the names, the addresses, the dates of birth. Sometimes if a date of birth or something important is missing we get flak from head office. There’s a middle-aged, nervous person who works here, named Sarah. If head office gets Sarah on a bad day she starts to cry and has to have a fag and a cup of tea before she can face work again. I could say I check the proposals in order to postpone Sarah’s imminent nervous breakdown but I’d be lying. I couldn’t give a flying fuck about either Sarah or head office. Nobody knows this though and when I spot something wrong I get a pat on the head and am cooed over. I am a novelty act. I am a performing seal.
The Occupation part of the proposal form always draws my attention. Maybe I’m just nosey but a lot of people who fill in these forms are local so I probably know them. Mostly, there’s the usual mix of farmers, general operatives and the oddly repellent sounding house duties. Every so often though you get a novelist or artist and I’m thinking, who are these people? Where do they live? Why haven’t I heard of them? Provincial towns don’t tend to produce bohemian types. The atmosphere of spent ambition, of time’s slow coalescence, means that aspirations beyond farmer or general operative are stillborn. Strangled at birth. People give up. No one is ever a poet.
See also Sculptor.
See also Actor.
See also Playwright.
I decide to give people an occupation.
I go through the stack of proposals, pen in hand, waiting until I see a blank Occupation section. I look around and as usual no one is looking at me. Sarah is putting down the phone and is starting to cry. She is having a bad day. Everyone else is either transfixed by their computer screens or is starting to gravitate towards the wreck that is Sarah’s sobbing body.
I come to a proposal with a blank Occupation section. Now I’m reading the name and address and date of birth and now I’m writing. The proposal belongs to one Mr Alexander O’Sullivan who lives in Kiltealy. He is forty-eight years of age and now he works as a drug dealer. I don’t intend to make him a drug dealer. At first I’m going to make him a musician but then I’m thinking, why should I? Maybe it’s jealousy but I’m not going to give this place another artist in hiding. I want to bring everyone down to zero. I’m looking out the window at the smiling, blank, defeated faces, the vacant lot of human existence. And I decide to make people what I see. Again, not out of badness, I decide to make people the rotten core at the heart of everything. I think it’d be funny. I think that I’m somehow proving my intellectual superiority. So I make them drug dealers. So I make them pimps. So I make them human detritus.
See also Rent Boys.
See also People Traffickers.
See also Thieves.
Each time I come across a doctor, a surgeon, an artist I strike a line through their occupation and put in something else. Then I photocopy them and then I send them off. Behind me Sarah is sobbing and someone’s going, ‘It’s okay, it’s alright. It’s not your fault.’
How I get sacked from the insurance place is like this. Every day I go through the stack of proposals and every day I give people new occupations. Every day I look out on the Market Square and watch the random melodrama of human life and every day I drag more and more people into the gutter.
