I have no real desire to be friends with two mentally unstable, up-and-coming gangland criminals — and that’s not me being a snob or anything
I’VE BEEN GIVING the two yahoos next door a wide berth since they, like, threatened to kill me? This, of course, all goes back to the time of the Queen’s visit, when they insisted that I join them on a protest morch to the British Embassy, holding a placard that said – this is from memory – “Lizzie! Lizzie! Lizzie! Out! Out! Out!” If you knew Terry and Larry Tuhill, you’d know they weren’t the kind of neighbours to accept a polite refusal.
Anyway, the actual trouble storted a week or two later, when a BBC news camera caught me walking towards Westminster Abbey, hand-in-hand with an old school friend of Kate Middleton, who’d asked me to be her plus-one for the big day.
Well, Terry and Larry felt very strongly that there was a contradiction between wanting Ireland to be free (which I don’t particularly) and hobnobbing with royalty (I didn’t even get in – I was considered a security risk, after a Garda special branch camera caught me walking up Simmonscourt Road with a placard that said, “Lizzie! Lizzie! Lizzie! Out! Out! Out!”).
So the two boys wanted to have a full and frank debate with me about the issues involved and, yeah, Terry did mention in one or two voice messages that I was “a fooken dead man”. Which is why I’ve barely been home for most of the summer (don’t worry about me, though – I always manage to find a bed).
Anyway, this particular Wednesday, a couple of weeks back, I had to sneak home to get one or two things and who did I end up running into in the corpork, only the Knuckles Brothers themselves. Well, it was like nothing had even happened? It was all, “Story, bud?” and playful punches in the orm and, “Forget about that ould royal wedding ast-me-bollicks – I was wound up at the time, wadn’t I, Laddy, over me case?”
“Let’s just put it behind us,” I went, as happy as a condemned man who’s suddenly been given his life back. Actually, literally that?
“What are you doing this Saturday?” Terry all of a sudden went.
I didn’t have an excuse ready. I’d actually dropped my gord. I was like, “Errr.” And he went, “You’re coming to the Aviva wirrus.” As soon as I heard the Aviva, I thought, the World Cup warm-up games don’t stort for another week.
Then it was Larry who went, “It’s a League of Arelunt selection against Manchester City. And you’re coming.” With Terry and Larry, it’s never so much an invitation as a summons.
I have to admit, I had one or two reservations. Firstly, I would rather be punched repeatedly in the face for an hour-and-a-half than watch soccer.
Secondly, I have no real desire to be friends with two mentally unstable, up-and-coming gangland criminals — and that’s not me being a snob or anything? So I said the first thing that came into my head. “My daughter’s sick.” Their faces just dropped.
“Sick?” Terry went.
“Well, not sick exactly. She, er – yeah, she broke both her legs.”
Larry was there, “This is your young one – the one who’s gonna be in that filum?”
“Yeah, it was actually an accident on the set, believe it or not. Looks like I’ll be, er, playing nursemaid for a while.”
“That’s teddible,” Terry went. And that was it. Or so I thought.
Last Sunday, I took Honor to Dundrum – the usual – where she was meeting a few of her friends from school. The Legends of the Mall, I call them. What generally happens – a lot of South Dublin fathers will be familiar with this – is that I sit on my own in one corner of Bucky’s supervising, while they sit at another table, tearing the back out of other girls they know. (“She’s so fat,” I heard Honor say recently, “her mum’s car has stretch-marks.”)
We were standing on the travelator, heading back to the carpark, when I suddenly saw it – too late, as it happens – a fist coming at me out of nowhere.
Bang! It was honestly the hordest punch I’ve ever taken, smack on the jaw. I felt my knees instantly buckle and the only thing that kept me upright was the hand that was holding me by the scruff of my sailing jacket. The hand of Terry Tuhill.
“You doorty, lying . . . ” he went, his grip tightening on the old Holly Hanson. He was standing on the next travelator over, going in the opposite direction, but he storted moving down it to keep a good hold on me.
Larry, standing beside him, went, “You toalt us she lost her legs.” I went, “I’m pretty sure I said broke her legs?” Maybe I didn’t.
Honor screamed – that was what brought me to my sudden senses. The old survival instinct kicked in. I tried to pull away but Terry had a good grip on me and he’s unbelievably strong for a little wiry focker. So I struggled. I twisted and I turned, this way then that, and somehow managed to slip out of my jacket, leaving Terry just holding it, all 700 yoyos worth.
Him and Larry keep running down the travelator, though, to stay level with me. I swept Honor up in my orms. I looked up the travelator, then down it.
“Which way are you gonna run?” Larry went.
For a few seconds, I couldn’t decide. Then I realised, around the same time as they did, that there was, like, two of them and only one of me.
“Terry,” Larry went, “splirrup. You wairat the top for him. I’ll wairat the borrom.”
I took off like a focking rocket. I chorged headlong down the travelator with Honor in my orms. She spilled her shopping bags and practically squealed, “Daddy, my Aviators!”
“I’ll get you another pair,” I went, as I reached the bottom, with Terry in hot pursuit. He was fast, but not as fast as me (“The only Irish player at any level who could live with the pace of Denis Hickie,” said this newspaper back in 1998). And also, of course, he was running down the up travelator? Which, even in an evenly matched contest, was going to cost him a good – you’d have to say – five seconds.
I reached the bottom and kept running. I could hear Terry behind me going, “You’re a fooken dead man, Rosser.”
We got to the cor, then I realised – again, too late – that I hadn’t paid for my porking. So I dived under it and dragged Honor under with me. I put my finger on her lips to tell her not to make a noise and we lay there silently, watching Terry stomp about the place in a pretty much violent rage.
“Daddy, who is that man?” Honor went, as we watched him aim a size 10 Nike Air Max at the pay machine and roar, “Fooken bastoord!”
“He’s nothing,” I went. “Prison-filler.”
She was like, “I thought we weren’t supposed to say bad things about people.” I was like, “There are exceptions. And I think it goes without saying that we don’t tell your mother about this.”
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