There were thousands thronging the seafront at Dún Laoghaire, sitting on the grass in groups of eight or ten, drinking cans and bottles. There seemed to be little point in being here, other than to drink and talk in proximity to others who were drinking and talking. Maybe that’s what a festival was: that and nothing more. There was a huge stage up near the Forty Foot but we felt no desire to push through the hordes to better hear the world music that was blasting from it. (‘World music,’ remarked Dowdall derisively. ‘Where else is it supposed to be from?’) I called Cocker and we shouted into our phones till we found each other.
‘Any relation to Jarvis?’ said Scag, when I introduced them to one another.
‘Yeah, I’m his da,’ replied Cocker.
Scag laughed. ‘I thought so. Right then lads, I’ve to head off now for a bit, but I’ll be back. I’ve another mate who lives out here who I haven’t seen in a while. I’m goin to drop in on him. Dowdall, if I don’t get around to Frank’s before yis leave, get me them yokes and I’ll fix ye up later, okay?’
Dowdall looked reluctant, but muttered yeah. Scag ducked into the horde, then me and Cocker walked off with Dowdall, stepping over hands and legs till we were past the thickest crowds.
‘Where are we off to?’ Cocker said, frowning, as we fell a few steps behind Dowdall. ‘I thought we were just goin to hang around the festival and have a few cans. Who the fuck is this piece of work?’
‘Relax. It’s just a mate of Scag’s. We’re goin to pick up a few pills. It’ll be cool, don’t worry.’
‘These are some weird-lookin cunts,’ he muttered.
We followed Dowdall down a side street, passing big, rich houses where I wouldn’t have minded living but knew I never would. Blank Frank was paying a home visit to one of his wealthier customers. Dowdall phoned him when we got to the house. Frank appeared a moment later at the second-storey window, mobile at his ear, gazing down at us. He was huge, bald, bearded and leather-clad; Blank Frank was an old-school biker.
Dowdall hung up. ‘We’ve to go upstairs,’ he told us. ‘Now don’t go makin bollockses of yerselves, do yis hear me? These lads won’t see the funny side.’ In a quieter voice he added, ‘Frank is … he has his problems. He isn’t that bad when ye get to know him, but it’s very easy to set him off. And that’s not somethin ye want to see.’
We ascended a marble staircase, passing framed posters of Bruce Lee and Eric Cantona, and stepped into the sitting room. Other than Blank Frank (who used to be called Frank the Fuck when he did vocals for Consumers of Atrocity back in the eighties, as Dowdall had informed us on the way), there was a bulky, crewcut guy with suspicious eyes. He wore a white T-shirt with Prada printed brazenly across the collar in navy lettering. Though it was clearly this man’s house we were in, he had that inner-city look to him; the raw, blemished face, the ugliness. There were two women as well, in their mid-twenties, both of them trashily blonde, faces caked with makeup. One of them was resurfacing from the coke she’d just been hoovering up from the glass table. She regarded us coldly. Blank Frank looked at me and Cocker.
‘This is just Matthew,’ Dowdall said quickly. ‘And that’s his mate.’
Blank Frank the Fuck shrugged. ‘So how’s things, Dowdall? Long time no see.’
Bottles of beer were offered all round by our jerky, shifty host, who had obviously done plenty of coke before we arrived. The girls said little, lighting cigarettes and watching us with hard, cynical faces.
‘Cut them all a line, Eileen, will ye?’ said the host, whom Blank Frank introduced as Seamus. I guessed he was some kind of gangster or high-end dealer. He was an erratic in a rich suburb like Dún Laoghaire, full of posh old cunts who spoke with near-British accents and looked down on the rest of us.
Dowdall, Seamus and Blank Frank sat down around a low wooden table on one side of the huge room, and started exchanging stories and jokes. Me and Cocker sat on a couch, listening to their loud, aggressive, uneasy laughter.
After some chat, Frank asked Dowdall how many yokes he wanted.
‘Ten for me,’ said Dowdall.
‘We’ll take ten of them as well,’ said Cocker, fishing out some notes from his jacket pocket.
Frank the Fuck looked up. Cocker fidgeted beside me, putting the money back in his pocket. The girls watched Frank. Suddenly he made a sweeping gesture and said, ‘C’mon up here lads, sit down with us for fuck’s sake. Yisser lookin all lonesome over there, huggin yisser beers.’
We shuffled over, smiling awkwardly, and sat down with them.
Now Frank was slamming his massive paw on the table and saying, ‘Dowdall, did I ever tell ye about the time me and Seamus here got caught with five hundred yokes outside the Point when Orbital were playing?’
‘No, what happened? Did yis get arrested?’
‘No, hang on and I’ll tell ye. We were just outside the entrance about to get in past security — the plan was to sell the yokes inside — and suddenly this plain-clothes cunt comes out of nowhere. I’ve still no idea how he knew we had the stuff. But he grabs hold of Seamus’s shoulder and starts screamin into his walkie-talkie, and he’s obviously callin the lads for reinforcements. And while your man has his hand there, Seamus just looks at me for a moment, then he turns around and CRACK, he loafs him right in the face. So your man goes down like a sack of fuckin shite and we leg it, peggin it down along the quays, in through the IFSC. We legged it down this lane and went into a pub and that was that. They didn’t catch up with us. We ended up goin on to some fuckin club — where was it, Spirit? — and sellin most of the yokes in there instead. And then all I remember is Seamus wearin the face off this big fat trendy bird, and next thing I follow them into the jacks and he’s ridin her over the fuckin sink!’
Seamus was slapping his thigh and laughing proudly at the anecdote. ‘Ye know what they say, lads: when war is ragin, every hole is a trench. Fuck me, that was a good night. I was still pissed off we never got to see Orbital, though.’
‘Orbital, now there’s a great band,’ said Cocker, nodding his head — even though he’d never listened to them in his life. No one paid him any regard.
Seamus said, ‘The next morning I bought an Aer Lingus ticket to Amsterdam and I fuckin stayed over there for nearly two months. I was bleedin shittin it that they were goin to hunt me down and lock me up for years. Or do ye remember that time we dropped a fuckload of acid and went to see Blade in the big cineplex on Parnell Street, do ye remember that?’
‘Fuckin right I do,’ said Frank the Fuck. ‘Or at least I remember coming to me senses in the cell the next mornin. Fuckin hell.’
Seamus was in tears of laughter. After a couple of false starts, he managed to get a few sentences out to deliver the anecdote.
‘We’d taken a whole sheet between the two of us, and we were just gettin into the film — which is total shite, by the way — and Frank was gone dead quiet, just fuckin engrossed in the film, or so I thought. And then, completely all of a sudden-like, he starts screamin his head off, just fuckin screamin like a mad cunt, this mad, high-pitched fuckin noise, like a lamb bein slaughtered. It was like he was on fire or somethin, or some mad fuckin animal. He had his hands to his face and it was like he was tryin to tear the skin off it, and all the time these mad fuckin screams comin out of him. People were leggin it out of the cinema and everythin, thinkin there was some kind of fire or I don’t know what the fuck. And I’m just sittin there pissin meself laughin, and next thing Frank is leapin up on the seat, lashin out at everythin. Kicked me in the fuckin jaw. Then he falls over into the next row and gets up, still screamin his fuckin head off and clawin at his face, and he legs it down the aisle and out of the cinema, into the fuckin foyer or whatever ye call it, upstairs where the bar and café is. By the time I managed to get up and leg it out after him …’