Oranges From Spain Read online

  For a second I thought about explaining how chance worked, but I simply said that he was probably right. Then he turned and smiled at me and his teeth were small and even and white and his eyes were cold and blue. He began talking in his quiet, polite voice and the smell of his scent grew stronger, and in his tie a little diamond tie-pin caught the light and glittered. He said that the waterfall game reminded him of the time he had visited Niagara Falls and what an impressive sight it had been, and how photographs really didn’t do it justice. Then he told me about some man who had once walked a tight-rope across it and then returned and carried his manager on his back. This last bit seemed pretty hard to believe, but he didn’t look the type of person who would need to tell lies to strangers. Then he put another penny in the machine and won ten back. He seemed pleased in a childish sort of way, and said that I had brought him luck. He asked me if I would like to play the basketball game and said that he would be very grateful if I could give him a game. We played it twice and he paid both times, giving sharp little shrieks of delight or dismay at each score, and all the time he went on talking in his quiet, polite voice about places he had visited and things which he had seen. I said that he seemed to have travelled a good deal, and he said that he had, and that he was something of a ‘restless spirit’, and when he said this he gave a little laugh which sounded like the tinkling of china. We played a few of the other machines and sometimes he pretended he didn’t know how to play and got me to explain it to him, and when he won he insisted that I shared the win because I had brought him luck.

  At first he was interesting in a slight sort of way, mainly because I have never travelled and so it was interesting to hear of the places he had visited. But gradually I began to grow tired of him and looked for a way of leaving. His talk began to take on a more serious and moralistic tone and he rebuked young people for their lack of manners and their rudeness to their elders, saying he was certain that parents should discipline them more. He exempted me from this and said how nice it was to meet such a well-mannered young man, and as he relaxed again he asked me to have a go on the shooting range. They didn’t have one of those ranges where you fire at little rows of moving ducks, but there was a submarine game in the shape of a periscope where you looked into a darkened screen and fired at moving battleships. I missed my first few shots and, saying that he would help me, he stood close behind me, and, looking over my shoulder, placed his hand on top of mine. His hand was small and fine, and I felt his breath on my neck and smelt the sickly swirl of his scent. I was glad when the game finished and I said that I had to go. Without waiting for a reply I turned and walked towards the door. Trying to appear casual, I strolled slowly down the hall, stopping occasionally to look briefly at some machine. I did not look back.

  When I got outside I began to walk quickly but I had only gone a short distance when someone grabbed me and bundled me into a doorway. There were four of them. They were younger and smaller than me and had the smell of poverty about them. They had been in The Silver Saloon and must have followed me when I left. The leader grabbed my shirt collar with a black hand and held a fist close to my nose.

  ‘Giv’ us yer money,’ he demanded, half-closing one eye as he said it.

  ‘I haven’t got any,’ I stammered, staring at his feet.

  Then the other started mimicking my country accent and calling me a country yokel.

  ‘Giv’us yer money or I’ll do ya!’ threatened the leader as he pulled my shirt tighter.

  I took the few coins left in my pocket and handed them over, almost apologising for not having more. One of the others grabbed my lapel and asked me if I was a Prod. I sensed from the question that they were not, and so I said I was a Catholic.

  ‘Say your rosary!’ they demanded.

  When they found out my lie, the four pummelled me to the ground, each taking a kick before they ran off. I picked myself up and dusted my clothes, feeling only the hot surge of anger and shame.

  The Pleasure Dome

  The car’s wipers pushed the rain aside, smearing the windscreen with a transfer of glazed light and colour. Rhythmically and hypnotically, like the beat of a drum, they moved from side to side, clearing the constant splashes before their replacements could stipple the glass. Colours, strange colours – purples, blues, reds – bled into the fluorescent yellow of street lamps and distorted the streets into a vibrant, translucent wash. Few people emerged from the shadows – a group of youths huddled at a street corner, a couple hurrying somewhere, an old man carrying a bicycle wheel. Momentary glimpses, then swept away in a fan of spray. Yellow light ran into white and back into yellow, streaking the road with slivers of neon that glittered like lights on a Christmas tree. Still the rain slanted down and still the wipers pushed it aside, silently and indifferently, like the blink of a giant eye that looked out from the car’s darkness and drank the transient images that flashed before it. Streams of silver water swirled in the gutter. The eye blinked. A woman with a black umbrella silently gestured her lagging child to stay beneath its shelter. The child trailed behind, splashing in a puddle, the coloured droplets frozen eternally in a dream. A confusion of streets and roads engulfed them, the strange and familiar merging and blending into one rivulet of refraction, transforming city, car and music into one prismatic pulse.

  The car moved erratically on its course with unpredictable speed and control. The driver had still not mastered the gears and his uncertainty produced a series of jerks and screeches. The car had looked new and attractive, but its multiplicity of switches and lights made the dashboard swim before his muddled senses and for an instant caused him to regret their choice. Perhaps they should have been less ambitious but the open invitation had proved impossible to reject. He knew its conspicuous appearance was dangerous, but could not resist its streamlined beauty. Black cars always reminded him of American films and streets in cities like New York or San Francisco. It had been the colour that had finally persuaded his already willing spirit. He imagined himself the hero of a film, invisible cameras recording his every action and expression.

  The music was a bonus. It pounded out of the expensive invisible speakers, a soundtrack to the film, and throbbed with an incessant and inescapable beat. There was, too, a variety of tapes to choose from, shop-bought tapes with real music by current groups and not the usual trash of James Last or country and western. The car belonged to someone young. He felt a bitter resentment that such a car could be owned by someone who still had young blood running in his veins. As he took a slug of wine – its sourness no longer noticeable to his tongue – his left hand beat the steering wheel’s rim in rhythm to the music. His passenger looked at him, his face bright and elated.

  ‘This is friggin’ magic, Joe, real class. Will you let me drive soon?’

  His pleasure spilled out in whoops of crazed exuberance. Joe supposed he would have to let him drive soon – it was only fair – but not just yet.

  ‘Soon, okay? I’m just beginning to get the feel of her. She’s different from anything we’ve had before. Faster, smoother – a real flier. Put another tape on.’

  Roon rummaged in the cassette case, his mouth and eyes widening in concentration as he read out the names and titles. He had no confidence that his own selection would please the driver.

  ‘Frankie Goes to Hollywood,’ ordered Joe, sensing his companion’s confusion.

  ‘Hey, Joe, we could go to Hollywood if we wanted to – “Joe and Roon Go to Hollywood” – screw Frankie, nobody invited him.’

  He laughed at his own joke and the rain fell heavily, sealing the car off from the world outside. The words and music of ‘Welcome to the Pleasure Dome’ rumbled through the speakers like manic thunder. Involuntarily, their hands and feet pounded out the swelling beat. The eye blinked once again. A black taxi squealed to a stop and, like some conjurer’s illusion, an impossible number of people piled out from its inside; some boys in identical grey jerkins stood break-dancing in a shop doorway. Roon squinted round and stared
like a deaf man. Then they were gone, washed away in a wave of liquid neon. The car moved on. Miles of roads. Long corridors of shops, the derelict and the new nestling side by side. Ten thousand streets, identical veins off identical arteries, deserted, sheltering from the storm, television light spearing the gloom.

  The car came to a halt at a temporary red light. Roadworks ahead were heralded by neat lines of cones. A single file of traffic came towards them. The light stayed red. No cars. Impatience rustled and grew until a foot pressed the accelerator and they sped forward on the red. Roon pushed his feet hard to the floor, pressing imaginary brakes and slipped down in the seat until only the top of his head was visible from behind. A white van started down the single traffic lane and then, brakes screeching, skidded to a quivering halt as the black car sliced violently across its front. Cones showered in the air. Horns blared. More cones rolled drunkenly askew. The wipers seemed almost drowned by spray and rain. For a few seconds the car twisted out of control and then gouged the side of a parked car like a tin-opener before righting itself and speeding on.

  ‘Shit, Joe! You’re a bloody madman!’

  Roon was shaken but no longer frightened. From the driver’s seat came a gentle laugh. The music reimposed itself. As they turned into a side street, Joe recited in a serious voice, as if fearful of getting the words wrong: ‘In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree, where Alph, the sacred river, ran through caverns measureless to man down to a sunless sea.’

  ‘What you talking about, Joe? Those aren’t the words.’

  ‘That’s where the song comes from – the poem ‘Kubla Khan’. You don’t think that lot thought it up for themselves, do you?’

  ‘A poem, Joe? I thought it was just a song.’

  ‘It’s a poem – didn’t you do it in school?’

  ‘We never did poetry – we didn’t do anything in school. Non-exam class from first form. Projects – that was all we ever did. Things like ‘The History of Manchester United’ or ‘The World of Animals’. You know – tracing pictures from books, copying out chunks till your arm was sore, sticking in photocopies with those poxy little Pritt sticks (they never trusted you with glue). After a while it really pissed me off and you always knew they never really marked them. No matter what it was like, you got a “B” and a “Good effort made”. The bastards never read them, Joe.’

  Roon slumped back into the seat momentarily exhausted by his eloquence and wounded by the memory. Joe drove on in silence.

  ‘We never got poetry, Joe – just projects and community service.’

  Joe laughed.

  ‘What community service have you ever done, Roon?’

  ‘Decorating old people’s homes and things like that.’

  ‘Casing them, more like.’

  ‘I never stole nothing. Honest I didn’t. I liked doing it. Some of those old people were all right – made you tea and talked to you about things. I never stole nothing.’

  His feelings hurt, Roon slipped into a protective womb of silence and hunched his knees up on the seat. The car drove on, unravelling the twisted knot of streets, glazing the somnolent pavements with a lustre of spray.

  ‘You never missed anything, Roon. Poetry was shit. You remember hardman McGuinness – he made me learn the thing for talking in his class. The bastard didn’t let up until I could recite the whole thing word perfect. It went on for about a month. Once I’d learnt it I couldn’t forget it.’

  Roon was appeased.

  ‘Honest, Joe, I never stole anything.’

  ‘If McGuinness was to walk out now in front of this car I’d run him over like a dog.’

  ‘He was a dog all right – a bloody mad dog. You remember the day he butted Rory Mallon? Split him open like a pod of peas. They say when his da came up McGuinness grabbed him by the throat and nearly throttled him. Almost went to court until Gallagher bought him off.’

  ‘If he walked out now off that pavement no money in the world’d buy me off. I’d have him.’

  He pressed his foot hard to the floor, making it thrust forward with a throaty curse of angry revs. The rain had eased a little now. In the blink of the eye appeared an old woman with an umbrella, a man with a muzzled greyhound, a sodden flag lashed to a lamp post; on waste ground two dogs sniffing round a black polythene bag. Then they crossed a bridge taking them into unfamiliar areas. Roon felt it was his turn to drive now but hesitated to ask again.

  ‘What’s a pleasure dome anyway, Joe?’

  Joe thought before he answered.

  ‘It’s a kind of special city this ruler ordered to be built with special things in it. It’s difficult to describe it and anyway, it wasn’t real – it was just made up.’

  ‘Was it a bit like Disneyland?’

  ‘Yeah, a bit like that,’ laughed Joe.

  ‘Ross McShane’s been to Disneyland. When we were in primary school, ten kids got selected to go on this trip to America. The family he was staying with took him. He said it was class. He said you could spend a week there and not see everything that was in it.’

  ‘How come you didn’t get picked, Roon?’

  ‘Aw, you know the form. They only took the goodies. They were supposed to take the most deserving but they sent all the teachers’ pets. It was supposed to be for kids who never had a holiday and they sent Ross McShane – everybody knows his da’s got a bloody caravan in Millisle.’

  ‘Have you ever had a holiday, Roon?’ asked Joe.

  ‘Once I went with our Jim to see a match in Liverpool and a couple of years ago I had a weekend in Buncrana with the youth club. I wouldn’t’ve minded going to America though. It wasn’t bloody fair, Joe – everyone knows his da’s got a caravan.’

  ‘Forget it. Anyway, you’re on your holiday now. Enjoy yourself.’

  He passed his companion the almost empty bottle and watched him drain it dry.

  ‘Joe, McShane said Disneyland’s bigger than Belfast. Do you think he was lying?’

  ‘Course he was – the lying wee git. If you see the wee shit let me know and we’ll flatten him like a pancake. He probably never even seen Disneyland.’

  ‘You’re too right. The closest McShane ever got to Disneyland was watching cartoons on friggin’ TV. Next time I see him I’m going to tell him that to his face.’

  The car drove on, exploring unfamiliar territory, their tribal instincts both disturbed and excited by the foreignness of their surroundings. Soon it would be time to return. Soon it would be time to ditch the car. But not just yet. The rain had eased now and filtered into a fine drizzle, allowing the wipers to relax a little and the eye to focus with greater clarity. A small flock of the faithful congregated round an open-air meeting, the preacher’s Bible raised above his head; the green neon telephone number of a taxi firm branded the dusk; two youngsters kicked a ball against a gable wall. A man came out of a Chinese takeaway with a brown paper bag. The car circled a roundabout several times, unsure of which direction to take, then headed off on a route that seemed to point them towards familiar hunting grounds.

  On a street corner ahead stood a gang of youths, restless and bored by the rain’s confinement. Two kicked a tin can to each other in a parody of seriousness. A different tribe. Roon lowered his window and pointed wordlessly at the empty bottle. The car closed to the kerb and reduced its speed. Twisting his body as far as the restriction of the seat would allow, he flung the bottle at the group. It fell short but sprayed glass in their direction, the noise and uncertainty of the nature of the missile sending them scuttling into the depths of doorways for safety.

  ‘A present from Walt Disney!’ shouted Roon as the car sped off, their laughter echoing each other’s.

  The moment gave impetus to their recklessness. The shelter of the car created a feeling of security and the steady rhythm of the music soothed all fears of apprehension. They accelerated past cars on the inside, then weaved in and out of others, a scream of horns and brakes cursing in their wake.

  ‘Look out, mister – it
’s the Dukes of Hazzard!’ shouted Roon, whooping and cheering like a cowboy at a rodeo and waving ironically to each new victim. He wanted to drive more than anything, but was frightened to ask. Joe was the boss, strange and unpredictable, but definitely the boss. He would not disturb him now, when he was in a mood that seemed close to happiness. Happiness was a mood that was a rare visitor to his friend, and he would not risk chasing it away. He whooped again as the car boomed through a large pool of water, hurling spray skywards like a bursting firework.

  The rain came on heavily again. The windscreen smeared and glazed again, colours sliding into one another in a stained blue of swimming neon. The eye struggled to blink. A wall shouted white-painted words and dates. Roon, searching the dashboard, found a pair of sunglasses and stared out at the greyness. An almost empty bus stopped on the opposite side of the road and an old man got off. No one got on.

  ‘It’d be good, Joe, if we never had to go back. It’d be good if we could keep this one and just keep going. This is the best one we’ve ever had – why don’t we keep it, Joe?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid, Roon. How long do you think we’d last before they found us? There’s not many cars like this driving around. We should’ve ditched it long ago.’

  ‘I don’t want to go back, Joe. There’s plenty of petrol in the tank – why don’t we take her and go somewhere really far? Drive all night. We could share the driving and whenever you get tired I could take over – just until you were ready again.’

  ‘Where’d we go? Sure you don’t know your way round anywhere outside your own street. You’re like a fish out of water once you leave your own patch – you’d be girning to go home five minutes after you’d got there.’

  Behind the sunglasses Roon’s eyes widened in denial.

  ‘No I wouldn’t. No way, Joe. What’ve I got to go back for? I don’t have nothing back there and neither do you. Why don’t we do it? We could go to Millisle and stay in Ross McShane’s caravan and in the morning we could hitch it on the back of the car and take it with us. We could do it, Joe. What do you say?’