Terpsichore O’Hanlon
and Stan MacKnee lived together on a barge, the Rumpelstiltskin, under an enshading willow on the Mangan Canal,
just down from the Slumbeg Bridge, a hop skip and jump across the lock from Moylan’s
Canal Bar and Grocery, the ensemble (plus St. Thor’s R.C. church, Mr. Iqbal’s
sweet shop, the Driscoe Cash ‘N’ Carry, and a Vroom filling station) clustered
together like a flock of cowering sheep on the broad upland of The Belfers, a
fertile tableland across which ran the chessboard pattern of symmetrical stone
walls erected by Homo Erectus or his descendants in the immediate pre-Neolithic
period, halfway between Killoyle and the former asbestos-mining
town-turned-health-resort West Crumsford North.
Stan, 40 or so, a
would-be writer or something, was a bargee more by happenstance than by
inclination. A mate, Terry Whelan (1st in line to inherit fuck-all
from Mack Whelan, bankrupt bus conductor and burden on the public rolls), had
absconded to Australia with the funds of various local church socials and bingo
parlours and had left Stan the title and ownership of the barge. So there was
always a place for Stan to put his feet up and lay his head down, sometimes
both simultaneously and at the same time, like. This was fortunate indeed, as
he’d lost his last job, that of under-assistant sub-foreman at Hildo’s Baals
(Eire) NV, the local branch of the Dutch ball-bearing conglomerate, by dint of
simple non-attendance spiked with insolence.
“It’s a fockin
shite-for-brains wankerama for a lark and nothing to me achall bar the
twice-monthly paycheque, which I declare here and now they can stuff right up
their arse,” he’d said to Terpsichore early one morning over a fag and a cuppa
as the cockerels crew on the nearby farms and the mallards gobbled on the canal
outside and the prospect of eight hours hunched over a bin full of steel balls
barely illuminated by a flickering fluorescent tube, under the hooded gaze of
Ruud the Dutch shop steward, seemed about as inviting as (say) a weekend nailed
to the side of a house, or dinner and dancing with Hitler.
“I’ll
just not go in, full stop. It’s too boring. What do you think of that? Bleedin’
deadly, eh?”
“What is it you do again, exactly?”
