Chapter Sixteen #3
“Look, man,” Bernard says, turning to him. “Progress isn’t a bad thing. You’ve no kids, it’s no skin off your nose if this place dies a death, but I want mine to have something to stay for. Jobs, and houses, and maybe the odd shop or the odd café to go into. What’s wrong with that?”
“I’ve kids,” Senan says. He’s sprawled on the banquette with his legs splayed wide, in a pose that looks casual but isn’t.
“I want them farming our own land that my father and my granddad farmed before me. Not hiring themselves out to break their backs for Tommy Moynihan’s fuckin’ city pals.
Away you go and pimp yours out if you want, but keep your hands off mine. ”
“You,” Mouth says, unable to stay silent any longer, pointing a thick finger at Senan, “get fucked. When you’ve done something for this place besides sitting in here complaining and scratching your fuckin’ hole, you’ll have a right to give out about the Moynihans. Till then, shut your gob.”
Senan turns up his hands and grins: Come and make me. Barty has moved out from behind the bar.
Cal wants his mark on this conversation, before matters progress past that point.
“You wanna kiss Tommy Moynihan’s ass,” he says to the McHughs and to the pub at large, “I can see why. Rachel Holohan went up against him, and look what happened to her. But I’m not some kid he can take down easy, and I don’t kiss any man’s ass. ”
He’s talking like a blow-in, and he’s doing it deliberately.
Every man in this room needs to be clear that Cal, at least, is bound by none of their hereditary tangles of laws and fears.
Off in the far corner, old F.X. Deery’s face splits into an incredulous grin of pure glee, before he wipes it away with a fast hand.
Mouth turns his stare on Cal. “There’s Don Juan,” he says. “Lock up your daughters, lads.”
Cal puts down his glass. He says, “You got something to say to me?”
“Mouth,” Bernard says.
“Let him talk,” Cal says. “I want to hear this.”
“You’re a dirty fuckin’ hoormaster,” Mouth says. “If Lena Dunne wasn’t mental, she’da poisoned you instead.”
Cal says, “You sure you want to bring Lena into this?”
Bernard says, “Mouth.”
“Watch how you eat her cooking,” Mouth says. “Look what happened her last fella.”
Cal realizes, with enormous relief, that he finally gets to punch someone. Mouth’s face just has time to register that Cal is out of his seat and shouldering Bernard aside, before Cal’s fist gets him right under the jaw.
Mouth staggers backwards. Barty is shouting something.
Bernard grabs Cal’s arm, but someone pulls him off.
Cal lunges after Mouth and lands a gut-punch, Mouth gets hold of his collar, and together they lurch into a table, sending pints flying.
All around him, Cal hears the explosion of shouts and crashes as everything goes all to hell.
The brawl, in a place that size and that crowded with people and furniture, is chaos.
Cal and Mouth are grappling, trying to hammer each other, but other bodies slam into them, sending them careening down the length of the pub, and neither of them can find room for a decent swing.
Cal manages to get Mouth in a headlock, but Mouth is strong and unwieldy and he can’t land a blow.
Everyone is shouting. Glimpses flash past Cal on all sides: P.J.
planting a neat right hook, a table going over, Skippy Gannon’s face streaming blood, a man on the floor straddling another and punching; someone up on a banquette, kicking out, dragged down flailing; Senan, wide-mouthed, bellowing in mid-charge.
Cal’s feet get tangled up with a stool, he takes someone’s elbow to the head and sees stars, but he hangs grimly on to Mouth.
Mouth is nothing, but he’s the closest Cal can get; Cal feels like if he can just hit him hard enough, hit him into silence, out of existence, he can make a clear space where Lena is safe and he can find her again.
He lands a punch in Mouth’s ribs, with all his strength behind it, and hears the grunt of pain.
Someone big gets shoved into them, Cal’s hold slips, and then Mouth is gone and somehow Cal is blocking a swing from a skinny guy whose face is frozen in a snarl of fury.
The floor is slippery with drink and crunching with glass, there’s no solid footing, but the skinny guy is no fighter and Cal fends off his whirling arms easily.
He ducks a swipe from someone, grabs the skinny guy around the middle, and body-slams him onto a banquette.
Then he turns, panting, to look for Mouth.
The fight seems to have thinned somehow; the noise has lessened and he can’t find Mouth, can’t see Mart or P.J. He feels someone behind him, spins, and then strong hands grab him under the armpits and he’s hauled backwards. “Out!” Barty roars in his ear. “Get ta fuck!”
Cal tries to twist free, but there are two guys holding him: Barty has deputized Fergal O’Connor, who’s young and big and the obliging type.
They bum-rush Cal straight through the remaining action to the door.
On his way out Cal catches a glimpse of F.X.
Deery, clutching his stick in both hands and joyfully whacking someone across the back with it.
Barty’s final shove sends him reeling halfway across the street; he has to grab hold of the lamppost to steady himself.
There are other men out here, and Cal looks around wildly for Mouth, but instead he catches the astonished stare of Doireann Cunniffe, agog on the sidewalk with her shopping trolley frozen in mid-roll.
They look at each other. Cal can’t think of a single thing to say.
Barty launches Senan out of the pub, Fergal shoves the skinny guy after him, and F.X. Deery totters out under his own steam, grinning and brandishing his stick high. “Ye’re all barred!” Barty shouts after them. “The lot of ye!” He slams the door, and Cal hears the bolt shoot home.
There are maybe fifteen or sixteen of them on the street, red-faced and breathing hard in the fine rain.
Everyone glances around, ready to roll if someone else starts up again, but no one does.
The sudden change of scene has taken the momentum out of things.
Mrs. Geraghty’s grandkids are pressed up against her sitting-room window, wide-eyed.
“I’ll fuckin’ have you,” Mouth says to Cal. He’s holding his ribs and wheezing.
“Any time,” Cal says.
“Come on,” Bernard says sharply, getting Mouth by the elbow.
Bernard has a black eye coming up and a lot of beer on his ironed shirt, and he doesn’t look happy with anyone.
“You’ve done plenty. Let’s go.” He herds the rest of his brothers towards their cars.
Doireann Cunniffe comes out of her trance and zips into Noreen’s, to be first with the oven-fresh gossip.
Gradually men move off, in twos and threes, sending dirty looks over their shoulders and throwing the odd insult.
For a fight that brief and that cramped, a lot of damage got done.
Tadhg McHugh looks dazed, holding his head and leaning on one of his brothers; Skippy Gannon’s cheek is still pouring blood from a gash that looks like someone glassed him.
Fights are inevitable, among men tied together this tightly, and Cal has seen a few break out before, but those were scuffles: shoving, shouldering, a couple of token punches, to establish hierarchies or to clear a disagreement. This was entirely different.
Cal and his buddies gather at the grotto, where P.J.
is sitting on the wall, rolling up his pants leg to inspect his shin.
His pants are soaked and smell strongly of beer.
“Someone turned over a table,” he explains.
His shin has a purple line across it and is swelling rapidly. “It caught me on the way down.”
“Didja enjoy yourself there, boyo?” Mart asks him.
P.J. glances up. He’s still wearing the same astounded look he had before the fight broke out. “I can’t tell,” he says. “I never done anything like that before.”
“You’ve done it now, boy,” Mart says, “and you done it like a pro. You’re a man of hidden talents, is what you are.”
“Fuck me sideways,” Senan says, flexing split knuckles. He’s grinning like a teenager who just scored with the prom queen. “That was deadly.”
“ ’Twas fuckin’ gorgeous,” Francie says. For the first time since Cal’s known him, his long melancholy face is lit up, exhilarated. He has a fat lip, but he doesn’t seem to have noticed. “The faces on people, man, when this fella”—Mart—“said his piece. I thought someone’d take a heart attack.”
“That fuckin’ eejit Larry McGinty, didja see him? Face on him like a cat’s arse. I thought he was going to cross himself.”
“I sorted Larry, boy. I fetched him such a kick up the hole, he flew halfway across the pub.”
“I knew ye’d get into the swing of it,” Mart says, grinning back at them. He has a graze on one cheekbone, and his hair is standing out in all directions, but apart from that he looks unscathed. “Ye just needed a wee nudge, is all.”
“We’re in the swing of it, all right,” Senan says. “No going back now, man. Was that loud enough for you?”
“Loud and clear,” Cal says. “That was beautiful.”
“D’ye know something?” P.J. says. He unfolds himself from the grotto wall and stands on one lanky leg like a flamingo, shaking the sore one experimentally and looking around at the rest of them with surprised pleasure. “I did enjoy that.”
“There you go,” Mart says, smiling at him and giving him a clap on the shoulder that nearly topples him. “Now you’ve started, there’ll be no holding you.”
“I don’t give a damn what Tommy does,” P.J. announces firmly. “I’m sick of tiptoeing around that shower.”
“Tommy can go and shite,” Senan says. He’s rolling one sleeve to try and hide a rip in his fleece. “The one I’m worried about is Angela. She’s only after buying me this yoke. I’m a dead man.”
“Let him work away and be damned to him,” P.J. declares. “If he comes at me, sure, I’ve my shotgun.”