He couldn’t go on because he was laughing too much. We were all laughing by now. After a while Seamus controlled it enough to continue.
‘And so I leg it out after him, and I’m completely off me fuckin tits as well. And every cunt in the cinema is standin there in shock, starin at this mad cunt. He’s after leapin in behind the bar and he’s just pullin bottles down off the rack — whiskey, vodka, all kinds of shite — and he’s fuckin them out of the bar, at the walls, on to the ground. He must’ve smashed about thirty bottles by the time the big golliwog security guard came burstin in and floored him.’
‘Kicked the fuckin shite out of me too, when I was on the ground,’ said Blank Frank proudly. ‘Or he must have done, cos when I woke up in the cell I was in a right fuckin state. Me head was like the fuckin Elephant Man.’
‘He did, he knocked the bollocks out of ye. He fuckin had to, man, ye looked like ye were a total fuckin psychopath. Every fucker there was shittin themselves. I thought ye were goin to kill someone.’
‘It’s a miracle I didn’t, hurlin all them glass bottles across the gaff like that,’ said Frank wistfully, eyes wet from laughing.
‘What did the police do?’ I asked.
‘Not a fuckin thing. I was able to convince them that I was off me trolley and therefore me actions were beyond me control. It wasn’t that hard to do — only a fuckin genuine nutjob would do somethin like that, that’s how they saw it.’
‘They weren’t fuckin wrong,’ declared Dowdall.
Blank Frank was drying his eyes. ‘Fuckin hell, I’m goin to piss meself.’
Beside me, Cocker had gone quiet and still. I thought he was freaked out and wanted to leave. But just at that moment, he jolted upright in his chair, slammed his palm on the table and said, ‘That’s very funny. Frank, you sound like a real demented cunt alright.’
The room fell silent. Surely Cocker hadn’t meant it to, but it had come out sounding like a blatant insult. The two girls on the sofa jerked their heads up, scenting brutality. Blank Frank stared at Cocker, who melted into his chair. Seamus inched backwards, eyes locked on Frank.
I expected an explosion but when Frank spoke, his voice was low and even.
‘What the fuck did you say, sunshine?’
Cocker stuttered. Unable to work up a sentence, he attempted an ingratiating grin. I heard myself speak: ‘He wasn’t bein sarcastic, Frank. That’s just how he talks.’
Blank Frank turned to me. I could see his lower lip trembling. His breathing was fast and shallow.
‘Didn’t mean anything,’ whimpered Cocker. The two girls were squirming with anticipation.
Frank turned back towards Cocker. Dowdall was looking at the floor, shaking his head and muttering under his breath. The room felt like it was about to implode.
And then:
‘GET DOWN HERE AND LET ME IN, YIS NEFARIOUS NAZIS!’
The roar came from outside, beneath the balcony.
Dowdall broke into hysterical laughter. Seamus leapt up and looked down on the street. Leaning over the balcony railing, he called out, ‘Scag ye mental cunt, look at the fuckin state of ye!’
Frank turned his head. ‘Ah Scag’s here, the brazen cunt. I haven’t seen oul Scag in ages.’
In the few seconds it took Scag to come upstairs, Frank turned back to Cocker, pointed a finger at him and said, ‘You just take it easy, sunshine.’ But it was almost good-natured, the menace all dissipated from his tone. Cocker nodded frantically. I began to breathe again.
When Scag entered the room, Blank Frank grinned at him and said, ‘Scag, me oul flower! The last time I saw ye, ye were rollin about on the ground down some fuckin lane, with yer jaws round the ankle of some cunt in a suit. Frothin at the mouth ye were. Ye just wouldn’t let him go. What in the good fuck was all that about?’
Scag smiled. ‘It’d seem very reasonable if I told ye who that person was. Which I’m not goin to do. Ye know me, Frank, I prefer to abide in the mystery.’
Frank roared with laughter and slapped his belly. He was like a gigantic baby. ‘Yer a fuckin headcase!’ he bellowed.
Scag noticed me. ‘I hope yis are bein nice to young Matthew here,’ he said. ‘This handsome renegade, he’s a good skin.’
‘A mate of yours, Scag, is a mate of mine,’ said Frank.
Everyone was cheerful now, opening beers and cutting out lines. We stayed for half an hour. Then Frank gave us our pills. Me, Scag and Dowdall swallowed one each. We said our goodbyes and wandered back towards Dún Laoghaire.
When we were away from the house Cocker said, in a deflated voice, ‘Listen, I’m gonna head home.’
‘Ah come on, we only met up an hour ago. The day’s just gettin started. What’s wrong? It’s gonna be deadly.’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t feel up for it any more. You can hang on to those pills. Just throw us a few quid whenever ye have it.’ I tried to persuade him to stay out but he was adamant. ‘What were we doin in there, Matthew?’ he said quietly, letting the other two walk ahead. ‘This isn’t our scene at all. These people are horrible. Why don’t ye stall it home as well? Or just come for a pint in town.’
But I wasn’t ready to go home or even to have a normal night. I left a pale, diminished Cocker at the bus stop, then hurried to catch up with Scag and Dowdall.
‘Is there anything decent on at this festival?’ Scag was saying as I fell in step beside them. ‘What about this bird ye mentioned earlier, where is she? She might have a few mates for me and Matthew here. Oul Matthew, he’s a bit of a fuckin sex-hound, you’d wanna see the fuckin cracker of a Norwegian he scored last night.’
‘No, man. The Spanish bird’s on her own,’ said Dowdall. ‘I’ve to meet her here and then we’re goin back to her place, that’s the plan. I’m goin to drop a few more yokes and nail her to the wall. That’s if I can even get it up. But are ye not throwin it into that big jungle-momma ye were with last time I saw ye?’
‘Not any more,’ replied Scag. ‘It was alright for a while but I started gettin fed up. She had this big fanny on her as wide as the bleedin Congo. Ye couldn’t get a bit of friction in there at all. It was like throwin a sausage up O’Connell Street.’
Dowdall chuckled. ‘Still and all, fine set of mangoes on her. But right, I’ll have to love yis and leave yis, lads. Have a good one, don’t stop till ye get enough.’
When Dowdall disappeared into the crowd, heading towards one of the smaller stages, Scag turned to me and said, ‘What a wanker. I really doubt there is a little Spanish bird he’s goin to see. He’s fucked off now and he’s goin to be yoked out of it on his own all day, just cos he had to pretend that he was meetin some bird to impress me. What a tosser.’
I could feel the ecstasy coming up on me, bleaching through the tiredness and the jerky, frazzled anxiousness that had crept in across the weird hours.
For a while we smoked spliffs with black lads who were watching a reggae band in a beer garden. Then we gave up on the festival and took the DART back into town, attaching ourselves to a bunch of Poles who sang and guzzled litre bottles of Paulaner and Lech. We swallowed our second pill each as the train was pulling out, and I lost all sense of where the highs and comedowns from the various drugs — ecstasy, cocaine, alcohol, grass — began and ended.
We blathered with the Poles all the way into town, punctuating our rants with peals of madcap laughter and slugs of lager. Scag gave up on the farcical attempt at meaningful dialogue and took to leaping up and down the length of the carriage, swinging from the metal bars between ceiling and floor, screaming ‘COME ON YEE BASTARDS!’ over and over. People laughed and cheered him on, but everyone looked tense whenever he got close to them. He was all loved-up on the pills, though, and meant no harm.