New Town Soul Read online

  ‘So, how do you know all this?’

  ‘An old doctor once told me. He warned me to never let anyone steal my soul.’

  That sounded crazy to me. ‘How could anyone steal your soul?’

  ‘That’s what I asked Dr Thomson.’ Shane rose. ‘Let’s get back on the bus; this place gives me the creeps – too many bad memories. I can’t stand being near any house that was burned down.’

  Finally the rest of the class was herded up and only when we left the wood did Shane’s normal good humour return. Soon he had the rest of us in stitches, teasing girls-impersonating teachers, razor-sharp and yet laid back as he won the most outlandish bets with people about everything from the number of sheep in the next field to the colour of the next car we would pass.

  When we reached the retreat centre we had group exercises for the rest of the day. We had to act out improvised dramas about immigration and, later, we were paired off, taking turns at being blindfolded so we could learn to trust the person leading us. Some of the exercises seemed ridiculous, but my new class were willing to go with the flow, never losing their sense of humour. They didn’t turn it all into a farce either, though. I don’t know what my former classmates would have done. Either die of embarrassment or wreck the building probably.

  After dinner we were left to ourselves. Shane had insisted that I bring along my guitar. Two other lads had brought guitars, and soon we were enjoying a singsong. I was unused to playing in front of people, but it felt OK because all the songs were chart hits that everyone knew. It was midnight when Shane raised his hand for silence.

  ‘Mademoiselles and morons, damsels and damsellettes, in our midst we have a great singer-songwriter and poet. Remember where you heard his songs first because one day you will spend hard-earned cash for the privilege of hearing this dude play. Now give it up for Joey Kilmichael.’

  I stared at Shane, feeling shocked and betrayed. He knew that I didn’t want to sing or let anyone know that I wrote songs. After my previous experience, the last thing I needed was more ridicule. But the faces around me were not mocking. Every student seemed to pick up and unconsciously mirror the interest in Shane’s eyes. They wanted to hear my lyrics. Shane gave me a wink that seemed to say, Go for it, kid. Stand up and be counted.

  His wink gave me strength. Closing my eyes, I played the opening chords. But it wasn’t my father that I imagined as my audience this time – it was Shane. I could sense him enjoying the music and could feel his enthusiasm spreading like an infection among my classmates. My lyrics were about vulnerability, about what it felt like to be young, to be excited by and yet slightly scared of all the new emotions I kept encountering.

  The silence when I sang was different from that awful silence during the talent contest. It felt like I had stopped time and I had people in my spell. My voice soared. For the first time I felt I truly understood the buzz of performing that had lured my father to trek across Ireland and Europe. Normally I was shy and tongue-tied, but behind this guitar I became another person to whom the old rules no longer applied. When I finished the first song, my classmates applauded and demanded more. I sang four more of my songs and then finally I put down my guitar, embarrassed by such acclaim. Shane winked again and I knew that he had orchestrated this because he knew I needed to be brought out of my shell. I had felt safe singing because Shane would never allow jeering. With a shock I realised that, just now, Shane felt like a father figure.

  Then the singsong resumed, with the whole class joining in on songs that everyone knew. I left the other two guitarists at it. People gave me appreciative thumbs-up signs as I walked towards the open doorway. I heard footsteps and thought that Shane was following. But when I glanced back the person following me out into the night air was Geraldine. Silently we stared out across the valley. The stars were so bright up here, the air still. I could sense her body like I always sensed it when she was near me. She was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen, her skin with its own special scent. I didn’t know what to say but it was she who spoke.

  ‘I liked your songs.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘The lyrics were brilliant. How do you make them up?’

  ‘They just come into my head; it’s a bit of a mystery.’

  She shivered slightly. ‘I don’t like mysteries.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I like things to make sense, to be uncomplicated. Like you.’

  ‘Are you calling me stupid?’

  ‘Uncomplicated doesn’t mean stupid,’ Geraldine said. ‘An uncomplicated person is someone you can trust, not someone you think you know who turns out to be a totally different type of person.’

  ‘Are you talking about Shane?’

  ‘I’m just telling you to watch yourself, because you’re better than Shane.’

  I shrugged, embarrassed. ‘What’s so special about me?’

  ‘I’m not saying there’s anything special about you.’

  ‘But you must admit there’s something special about Shane.’

  ‘Something unnatural, more like.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I knew him two summers ago. He was a bit like you, back then.’

  ‘In what way?’

  Geraldine blushed. ‘He was kinda cute … just ordinary, but he was sweet.’ She stopped and looked at me. ‘He’s using you.’

  ‘What do you mean? Before I hung out with Shane nobody in this class knew I existed.’

  ‘I noticed you the moment you walked in.’

  ‘Why?’

  She turned away, embarrassed. ‘Are you fishing for compliments or something?’

  ‘I’m just not used to girls chatting me up.’

  ‘I’m not chatting you up.’ Geraldine sounded defensive. ‘Being able to sing a couple of songs doesn’t make you a rock star. I’ve never chased any boy in my life.’

  ‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ I said quickly. ‘Listen, Geraldine, I’m no good at saying things except in songs. But I think about you all the time. I keep trying to find the courage to ask you out.’

  ‘Don’t waste your breath, because I’ll say no.’ She saw how crushed I looked and brushed my arm softly. ‘That sounds cold, but I’m not ready to go out with another boy just yet. Bitter experience; let’s not go into it.’

  ‘Has it to do with Shane?’

  ‘I thought I knew him.’ She paused, seeking the right words. ‘Then one day he changed. Does he ever mention his folks?’

  ‘Just that they died and he went to live with an aunt in England. When she got sick he came back to Dublin.’

  ‘Do you remember a fire two years ago in the duplex development at Sion Hill?’

  It took me a minute to recall watching coverage of the aftermath on the news, but I couldn’t remember any details of it.

  ‘Is that how they died?’

  ‘That was the dream home his folks couldn’t afford,’ Geraldine said. ‘His mum died of smoke inhalation. His dad dragged her dead body outside, then he kept screaming that Shane was still in there, though the whole place was in flames by then. The neighbours couldn’t hold him back. He charged straight back in, shouting that he had to save his son from drowning – it sounded mad in the middle of a fire. The roof collapsed on him moments later.’ Geraldine glanced at me. ‘Do you know where Shane was all that time?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Standing unnoticed amid the crowd in his pyjamas, saying nothing as he watched his dad run back inside to his death.’

  NINE

  Shane

  June 2007

  When Shane and Geraldine met in Blackrock on the morning after they had first sent texts to each other it was like they needed to make up for all the times when they had said nothing. Now, they couldn’t stop talking and laughing. The librarian didn’t know what had got into them, but they didn’t stay in the library for any longer than it took to pick some books. Soon they were walking along Newtown Avenue. This time when Geraldine went in through the side
gate to her garden Shane walked alongside her. Everything felt new and thrilling and when he touched the hammock beside the apple tree Geraldine laughed at the sense of wonder on his face.

  ‘It’s only an ordinary hammock, silly,’ she said. ‘Surely you’ve seen a hammock before?’

  But for Shane there was nothing ordinary about her garden. It felt almost as if a guardian angel had led him here, as if someone who understood his loneliness had granted him his second most fervent wish. His most fervent wish remained that his parents would find enough money to be happy. But this morning, he wanted to forget about any problems at home and to savour the sense of being made to feel welcome in Geraldine’s garden as her grandmother appeared at the back door.

  ‘Stay out there in the sunshine,’ the woman said with a smile. ‘You both look like you wouldn’t say no to some crisps and lemonade.’

  Shane spent all afternoon lying in Geraldine’s garden, while she burned him a CD of her favourite songs and let him share her earphones so that they could both listen to her iPod. She kept disappearing into the house to get books he hadn’t read. She even brought out a cartoon strip that she had drawn herself, with matchstick figures spouting such utter nonsense that the captions sent Shane and Geraldine into unstoppable fits of laughter. It was late afternoon when Geraldine produced a battered biscuit tin that contained her treasure trove of most precious possessions.

  Shane sensed that she had never shown some of these mementos to another living soul. There were ticket stubs from concerts by her favourite bands, a worn leather collar belonging to her dog that had died in her arms and a cherished wristwatch that once belonged to her mother, who drowned in a swimming accident off the Blackrock coast when Geraldine was only three years old.

  ‘Nobody could ever explain it,’ Geraldine said. ‘My mother had been a Leinster schoolgirls champion swimmer. She even won an athletics scholarship to an American university. People talked of her being an Irish Olympic swimming prospect. I sort of got in the way.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Shane asked.

  Geraldine fidgeted awkwardly with the strap of the watch. ‘She came home from a summer job in London two months pregnant. A summer romance that didn’t last. I was her only souvenir of it. After I was born, she had to give up the swimming scholarship. She wound up back here in Blackrock, living with her mum. She still went swimming every day, though. She was training for a sea race when she died.’

  ‘How did it happen?’ Shane asked.

  Geraldine put the watch back in the box. ‘A freak accident, Gran says. It was a totally calm day by all accounts, and she knew this stretch of coastline like her own skin. Afterwards, if Gran brought me near water I would scream. I was terrified of water. I still am. I have dreams about drowning.’

  ‘So do I.’

  Geraldine looked at him. ‘What type of dreams?’

  Shane shrugged. It was impossible to explain his recurring nightmares and how his father also dreamed about water seeping up through the floorboards of their old house. ‘Let’s talk about something else,’ he said. ‘Let’s talk about books. Do you ever imagine what it would be like if you were a character inside one, going around investigating mysteries and suchlike?’

  Geraldine laughed, keen to move the conversation away from dark memories. ‘We could do that,’ she said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘We could start an investigating agency and solve a few mysteries.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I just mean it as a bit of a laugh, something to do.’

  Geraldine made it sound like the greatest joke in the world, but Shane knew why she suggested it. The idea appealed to her for the same reason that it appealed to him – if they ironically pretended to be detectives it would give them an excuse to hang out together, without any ‘boyfriend’ or ‘girlfriend’ pressure.

  ‘We better invent a password,’ he said with mock seriousness.

  ‘Fair enough,’ Geraldine said. ‘We’ll use the maker’s name on my mother’s watch, but only if you promise never to reveal it aloud to another living soul.’

  She went indoors and fetched an envelope that she placed the watch inside. ‘We’ll seal it with our lips,’ she said, ‘and then it will be just our secret.’

  Shane hoped that she was going to kiss him, but instead she wet the glue on the back of the envelope with her lips, then handed him the envelope to do the same. He followed suit and passed her back the sealed envelope.

  ‘It’s truly our secret now,’ she said and blushed slightly.

  He nodded and rose to leave. As he walked home, he kept remembering Geraldine’s smile as she carefully stowed away that envelope in her biscuit tin of precious possessions.

  TEN

  Joey

  Late October 2009

  As the weeks went on, some teachers in Stradbrook began to harbour a mistrust of Shane. But I noticed that Geraldine didn’t just mistrust him: she seemed genuinely spooked in his presence. Not that I ever got to properly ask her why, because when Shane was around she never spoke to me and, more and more, Shane seemed to be perpetually at my side.

  Before the school retreat in Wicklow, people had seen me as merely his sidekick, but now I acquired the nickname of The Songwriter. Older students would stop me in the corridor to ask my opinion about different bands. Two sixth years asked me to join a band, but I had no interest in the mainstream covers they planned to do because nobody ever became immortal by sounding like somebody else. I wanted to play my own songs, because whether they were good or woeful, my songs were at least original.

  Shane got a great kick out of other people liking my songs. He joked about becoming my future tour manager, whose duties would include visiting all venues in advance to check out the sound system, the drugs and the girls. I discovered that he had put up a Facebook page for himself, but it contained no personal details, just a full-length, unsmiling picture of himself against a seascape of the Blackrock shoreline at dusk. The photo had been digitally manipulated so that directly behind his shoulder there was a line of reproductions of his face, decreasing in size and becoming ever more blurred as they stretched away into seeming infinity across the skyline. He laughed when I asked him about this picture and jokingly called it ‘postmodern irony’. I had no idea what ‘post-modern irony’ was, but I knew this was the only answer I would get from Shane.

  Shane insisted that I create a Facebook page containing all the lyrics of my songs and pictures that he took of me clowning around. He wanted to make some recordings of me to post as well. But I refused because – and maybe this was a reluctance picked up from my father – I didn’t want to record any of my songs until I had got the sound as near to perfection as it could be. Shane joked that the page would improve my love life, that half the girls in our class would date any boy who could strum a guitar and all of them would date any boy who could actually play the blasted thing in tune. I was only interested in one girl though. But the next occasion we got to speak was when Geraldine and I found ourselves shoulder to shoulder as we entered the science lab, a fortnight after that Wicklow class retreat.

  ‘Shane is using you in some way. You’ve become like his pet poodle.’

  ‘Shane is sound,’ I protested. ‘I really don’t understand your hang-up about him. How is he using me?’

  ‘He wants something from you and he’ll get it – you wait and see. Did he tell you that he came home because his aunt in England is seriously ill?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘She’s not seriously ill; she’s seriously dead.’

  Geraldine selected a desk as far as possible away from me, knowing that people would automatically leave the seat beside me free for Shane. I didn’t know what to make of her news or what quarrel had occurred between them to make her so mistrustful of him. When I quizzed Shane during lunch break he sounded hurt by her attitude.

  ‘I don’t know why she hates me. We were thick as thieves two summers ago, but then my
folks died and my life turned upside-down. Losing your parents screws you up. After the fire I was packed off to live with my mum’s sister in Leeds. I last saw Geraldine outside the church in Blackrock when the mourning car pulled away. She waved, but I didn’t wave back, because nothing felt real. You know, some nights I still wake with the stink of smoke in my nostrils. When I went to England, I was convinced that my clothes stank of smoke, even though my aunt had thrown away all the clothes I brought over from Ireland. That fire killed something inside me. The last face I expected to see when I walked into this class was Geraldine’s, but she cut me dead. She fancies the pants off you, though.’

  ‘She does not,’ I said, embarrassed.

  ‘I know the signs because she fancied me once. For you, she is seriously hot to trot. I have no chance with her because she thinks that I should still be the sad-eyed boy she last saw at that funeral. But you have to move on in life; you must overcome grief. It’s time you overcame your loss.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m talking about how you’re still mourning your dad.’

  ‘I never even knew my dad.’

  ‘That doesn’t stop you thinking about him. Listen, I know about loneliness because I’m fatherless too. Life has kicked us both in the teeth. Now you can either curl up and die or stand up – no matter how hard you hurt inside – and show the world you’re a contender.’

  Shane adopted a boxer’s stance, playfully punching my shoulder. ‘Come on; give me your hardest punch and I’ll just keep getting back up.’

  His blows hurt. I slugged him back, playfully at first but then with a growing annoyance. He laughed, dodging my fists to land a hard slap on my cheek. ‘You’re letting your guard down, Joey, losing your cool. Never let anyone see your emotions. It gives them a glimpse into your soul.’

  He caught my fist as I swung it at him again. I felt angry without being sure why. Maybe it was the way he kept mentioning my father, as if to emphasise his absence. Sensing my anger, Shane brought his face close to mine and contorted his features so that the lip hung down as if deformed. The sounds from his throat were not words, but a strangulated babble of grunts as if he couldn’t speak. His eyes looked manic. It was scary and yet so darkly funny that soon he could hold the mask no longer and we were doubled over with laughter.