‘I don’t see what this has got to do with Juster,’ Howard says quietly, aware of how loud Farley has got.
‘No one cares, Howard, that’s what it’s got to do with him! If someone had been looking out for that kid this wouldn’t have happened, I guarantee you – I guarantee you,’ over Howard’s mumbled protests, ‘but no one was, because no one cares, instead we just pay lip-service to caring, like we pay lip-service to charity and all those Christian values we supposedly stand for while we’re slumped in front of our incredibly high-resolution plasma TVs, or we’re driving off to our holiday homes in our SUVs. Like, don’t you think it’s a fucking joke, calling that a Christian life? Do you think fucking Jesus would have driven around in an SUV?’
‘Here,’ Tom interjects roughly. They look up: he is glaring at them intently through reddened, bleary eyes; a rash of sweat glistens across his forehead.
‘What?’ Farley says, pointedly.
‘I don’t know what you’re shiteing on about,’ Tom says, ‘but leave Jesus out of it.’
‘Why?’
‘Just do it, is why. Show some respect.’
‘Show some respect is just another way of telling people to keep their mouths shut,’ Farley says.
‘Okay, keep your mouth shut.’
‘See, that’s exactly the kind of thing I mean,’ Farley ripostes, the whole room looking at him now, ‘we spend all our time congratulating ourselves on what a great school we are, we go into class every day and fill the kids’ heads up with crap, but you try to say anything about what the world’s actually genuinely like and someone’ll tell you to keep your mouth shut and show some respect –’
‘You know what your problem is, Farley?’ Tom raises his voice.
‘I don’t know, Tom –’ Farley raising his own right back ‘– what’s my problem? Enlighten me.’
‘Your problem is you’re a knocker. You’re a typical fucking Irish knocker. While decent people are putting their heads down and getting on with the job and doing the best that they can, you hop about like a little bird, picking away at everything, chipping away at everyone’s morale, because you’re too spineless and selfish to try and make a difference –’
‘You’re totally right, Tom, you’re absolutely right, I am spineless, I am a spineless selfish useless person, and I don’t do anything to try and make a difference, but you know what, neither do you, and neither does anyone in this fucking place beyond the bare minimum, instead we just look after ourselves and the people like us, because we know that otherwise things might actually change –’
‘Take it easy,’ Howard tells him, and when this has no effect, appeals to Tom, ‘He’s had a lot to drink.’
‘Fuck off, Fallon, you’re worse than he is.’
‘Things might change,’ Farley repeats, standing now with his arms outstretched, ‘we might even have to let strangers into our little treehouse. Poor people! Foreign people! How would you like that, Tom? How would you like to see your precious school full of knackers and refugees?’
‘At least it’d be better than faggots like you,’ Tom rejoins.
‘Boys, please,’ pleads Miss McSorley.
‘Oh right, I’m a faggot now, am I?’ Farley inquires.
‘Come on now, lads,’ Slattery weighs in. ‘This isn’t the time or the place.’
‘I think you’re the faggot,’ Farley says.
‘Say that once more and I’ll knock you down,’ Tom promises.
‘I think you’re an arse-crazy homo, you’re a flaming mincing fudgepacking queen, and all you think of from one end of the day to the next is boys in their pretty little swimming togs –’
Tom lunges at Farley but several men intervene to hold him back and his punch fails to connect. It seems to waken Farley, however; he stares at Tom, his mouth open in surprise.
‘Come on, let’s get out of here.’ Howard tugs at his arm.
While Tom wrestles with his captors, he hustles Farley out of the pub. The street outside is wintry and monochrome. Above, a blood-red sun flares through the clouds, like a last live coal uncovered among the cinderwork of the dying seasons. When they are a safe distance away, he turns on him. ‘What the fuck are you doing? What was the point of that?’
‘I don’t know, Howard.’ Farley looks off bleakly at the sea. ‘It’s just, they’re just kids, you know? And the people who’re supposed to be looking after them, and teaching them about maturity and responsibility, we’re worse than they are.’
Howard pushes him away, grinds his teeth. They walk down to the main road, where after five minutes Howard manages to pluck a taxi from the traffic. He declines Farley’s invitation to come back to his apartment and drink more.
At home there are no messages on his answering machine. He picks up Graves and numbly turns the pages. We no longer saw the war as one between trade-rivals: its continuance seemed merely a sacrifice of the idealistic younger generation to the stupidity and self-protective alarm of the elder.
If someone had been looking out for that kid this wouldn’t have happened.
According to the papers, Howard was the last adult to see Daniel Juster alive. Alive, in the rear-view mirror, merging with the dusk, as if he stood on the threshold right at that moment, a dark door Howard couldn’t perceive. But how was he supposed to know? And even if he had known, what was he supposed to have done? Bring him home with him? Ditch his car and go and play with him, in the freezing cold car park? That would somehow have made everything all right? Throwing around a frisbee like he was fourteen years old? When was the last time he even played frisbee?
But then thinking about it he realizes he remembers the last time quite clearly; and with a disarming vividness finds himself not so much in the grip of a memory as slipped back to that very time, to the shape and feel of being fourteen – the taste of apple-flavoured bubblegum in his mouth, the humiliation of a spot on his chin, the unending turmoil of that endless struggle to stay afloat in a roiling sea of emotions, and the thousands of hours spent out on the gravel, determined to master an utterly valueless skill – the frisbee, the yoyo, the Hacky Sack, the Boomering – in the unshakeable belief that in this lay his salvation. Half of him battling to become visible, the other half just wanting to disappear. God, how had he ever endured it?
A knock at the front door. Howard has lost track of time, but knows that it’s late: hoping against hope – Halley! – he springs out of his chair to turn the latch. He ducks just in time to dodge the fist that comes flying out of the darkness.
And in the village the wind sets the lids of the wheelie bins chomping at nothing, and in the cinema Hulk bounces and swings his fists, and in the video-game shop the Christmas games are in, and in Ed’s there’s a special offer, two boxes of doughnuts for the price of one, someone says it’s because of what happened but someone else says no, actually they’re doing it in all the branches. It doesn’t matter where you go though, nowhere feels big enough to contain you, even if you’re right in the middle of the mall it still somehow seems too shallow, like when you were younger and you tried to make your Transformers visit your Lego town, and they were just out of scale, it didn’t work – it’s like that, or maybe it isn’t, because you also feel really tinily small, you feel like a lump in somebody’s throat, or actually who cares what you feel, and everywhere you go you encounter other grey-clad boys from your year, looming up like hateful reflections – Gary Toolan, John Keating, Maurice Wall, Vincent Bailey and all of the others that are the pinnacle of the evolution that began so many years ago with that one depressed fish that if you met him now you’d tell him to stay in the sea – there they are, pale-faced but smirking, sleeves rolled up, and though it’s sad, it’s sadder than a three-legged dog, it’s also flat, it makes you angry, so when someone says Skippy was a homo you’re almost glad because you can fight them, and they’re glad too, so you fight, until someone gets his jumper ripped or the security guard chases you out of the mall, and you’ve already been kicked out of the other mall, and it’s too cold to go to the park, and you think it must be almost time to go to bed but it’s not, it’s only just time for dinner, which is car-tyre with phlegm sauce and which you leave mostly uneaten, and privately you’re thinking Skippy is a homo too, you’re thinking, Fuck you Skippy, though you’re also thinking, Hey, where’s Skippy? or Skippy, did you borrow my – and then you think, Oh fuck, and everything shakes around the edges again and you have to hold on tight to your lucky condom or your Tupac keyring or your actual live shotgun bullet, or if you don’t have one of those things, wedge your hands deeper in your pockets or throw a stone at a seagull or shout after a knacker in the village how his mother was in excellent form last night and run for it, and dream of being Hulk, or a Transformer in a Lego town going smash! bash! crash! stomping the whole city to the ground, incinerating the little yellow-headed Lego people with your laser eyes till the smiles melt right off their faces.