THE AMOUNT OF MONEY I’ve stuck in Wes Quirke’s family’s pockets over the years. Still, once Ronan’s happy. Which, it has to be said, he certainly seems to be – loosing off his Glock so that the cop cor that’s been, like, pursuing him ends up totally full of holes.
I check the score and it’s already a new record, although there’s no way of knowing whether that’s even genuine. He’s always pulling the plug on the machines, see, to clear the entire history and make sure he ends up on top of the pile? They’re forever warning him about it.
“You’re unbelievably good at this,” I still go, because kids respond well to what Sorcha always calls positive reinforcement. “A head shot, Ro – the focker’s wearing a vest!”
While he’s waging his one-man war against the Baltimore police in Dr Quirkey’s Goodtime Emporium, I’m asking him how he’s been keeping lately. I get the impression that something’s eating at him – I’ve got a fifth sense about these things – and I’m wondering if it has anything to do with what happened before Christmas.
Ro – you may or may not know – played the port of Adam in Castlerock College and Mount Anville's joint production of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. This is going to sound bad, roysh, but I set him the challenge of getting off with all seven brides – going through the cord it was called when I achieved it back in 1997 – and I'm proud to say that he did me proud. Played the seven of them like spinning plates – though not without there being, like, repercussions? To cut a long story short, on the night of the production, the brides got together and attacked him on-stage, stripping him practically naked in front of an audience of, like, 300 – and, well, however many have watched it since on YouTube.
“Are you, er, still upset about what happened at Christmas?” I go. “Because, like I told you at the time, there’s other schools. Alex. Holy Child Killiney. A lot of people turn their noses up at Muckross but I was always a fan.”
He’s like, “I’m fine, Rosser,” but I can tell deep down that he’s not?
“Is this about your mate Buckets of Blood going back into debt collection?”
“No.”
“Because I know you’d huge hopes for him making a go of the painting and decorating until the whole current economic thing.”
He ends up just blurting the reason out. “Me ma’s back going out with McGahy!”
I’m actually, like, speechless. McGahy is his school principal. His ma is, well, his mother.
I’m there, “Are you sure, Ro?”
“Thee went to the theatre last night.”
“What? What did they go to see? Actually, don’t even answer that – wouldn’t mean a thing to me either way. I’m pretty much babbling here while I try to get my head around it.”
“I found the tickets in me ma’s poorse this morning.”
I shake my head – I think it’s a word – ruefully? Tina and McGahy had, like, a brief fling last year, until I managed to persuade them what it would do to Ronan’s life if the kids in his year found out that his mother and the school headmaster were bumping uglies.
They must have got back together again – possibly around the time of the Castlerock College board of management emergency meeting to decide whether or not to expel Ro for the Seven Brides business. So in a way I blame myself.
I’m there, “It was definitely McGahy she went to the theatre with?” I mean, the theatre? When I was with her, three pints of cider and a tub of hot nuts in the Broken Arms in Finglas Village was a good night out.
“I saw them,” he goes, his little hort breaking. “I looked out the window as he was dropping her home . . .”
“In his Nissan focking Storlet – don’t even finish that sentence, Ro. God, I remember me, JP and Oisinn wrapping that cor in clingfilm back in our senior year. That’ll tell you how long he’s had it.”
Of course, there’s a lot of history between me and McGahy, just as there is between me and Ronan’s mother. He taught me, I think geography, back in the day. Anyway, there was an incident in the class. I said that the Egyptians had built the Pyrenees and he said there were more intelligent life-forms than me crawling blind on the ocean floor. At which everyone laughed.
The famous Fr Fehily got wind of my humiliation and threatened him with the road unless he apologised to me in front of an entire assembly. I’ll never forget the look on McGahy’s face when Fehily stood up and went, “Now – one of the staff has something he wishes to say to Ross O’Carroll-Kelly, the captain of our all-conquering senior rugby team . . .”
Of course, I made his life a misery after that, knowing that he couldn’t basically do anything to me. Then, of course, he got his own back when he became principal himself, agreeing to have the result of the 1999 Leinster Schools Senior Cup final reversed, all because I happened to be taking methylamphetamine at the time we won it.
And here we are again. Still making each other’s lives a misery. I’m sort of, like, Harry Potter and he’s a kind of Lord Voldemort who hates rugby.
Ronan goes, “If this gets arowunt, Rosser . . .”
He doesn’t need to say another word after that. The embarrassment of being stripped stork Vegas naked on stage by an – I don’t know – coven of vengeful Mounties is nothing compared to the humiliation of everyone in Castlerock finding out that his old dear and the school principal are knocking boots.
“It won’t,” I go. “Leave it to me.”
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