The Choice, page 14
‘What are you up to?’ he said. When he spoke, he had a country accent. All of the guards in Dublin were from the country. I don’t think I’d ever met a Dublin guard. Where did all the Dublin guards go, I wanted to ask, but being smart now wasn’t going to do me much good.
‘Me? I’m just waiting for the bus,’ I said, looking around as if I wasn’t sure who he was speaking to.
‘The bus, yeah? And who else is with you?’ he said.
‘No one.’
‘Who are you whistling at then?’ he said, his eyes narrowing a little as he took a few more steps towards me. He was tall and looked strong, and he was close enough now that he could have reached out and grabbed me by the collar of my jacket if he wanted to. He couldn’t do that, though. I hadn’t done anything wrong, and if he touched me, Mam and Dad could go down to the station and report him.
‘I just like whistling,’ I said, deciding it was better to play dumb rather than get too cheeky. ‘I was going to do a song.’ I was hoping he’d decide there were more serious crimes than hanging around bus stops and whistling and just send me home. I looked straight past him to see if I could spot the lads trying to climb back over the station wall, but there was still nothing.
He noticed me watching the wall, and he turned to see what I was looking at. ‘Stay there,’ he told me, and he walked in a circle around the shelter and reappeared on the other side.
I knew what was coming next: name and address, please, and then he’d write it into his notebook and tell me to go home. That was always the way with the guards, even though I was never really in trouble. Any time they saw two or three of us hanging around, they thought we must be up to something and told us to move on. ‘Loitering’ was one of their favourite reasons, or ‘anti-social behaviour’. There must have been boxes full of notebooks inside in the station with pages of our names and addresses, and plenty of fake ones too. What was the point?
Except, this time, he didn’t ask me for any of those details. ‘Go on away home and don’t be messing,’ he said.
‘What messing? I didn’t do anything,’ I said. The guard folded his arms across his chest, and I didn’t need to be told twice. ‘All right, I’m going, I’m going.’
He stood and watched me as I started walking up the road. I hadn’t gone more than a couple of steps when I heard the lads hurrying back over the wall.
‘Go go go, leg it,’ Al shouted. The entire garda station lit up in an instant, front and back, as bright as a football stadium with floodlights hitting every inch of it. Two guards burst through the front door just in time to see the four lads land like cats and hit the ground running as they tore off down the road.
They went in four different directions, forcing the guards to split up. I didn’t need to be told what to do. I already had a bit of a head start on the guard who had been speaking to me.
‘Hey! You! Get back here now,’ he roared as he started to chase me. ‘You’re under arrest.’
His footsteps were heavy on the ground, and with every stride, they sounded like they were getting closer. He could move for a big man. Still, I was faster, and Ballymun might have been his beat, but it was my home. I could get lost in a second. Up ahead, a car was stopped at the traffic lights, and as the lights turned green and it pulled away, I saw my opportunity. I darted in behind it, sprinting across the road. The guard had to break stride to avoid getting knocked down, and by the time he’d crossed, it was too late. I was gone.
I wasn’t running towards our flat any more, I realised. I was running away from it, but that was better than leading him right up the stairwell and to the front door. Mam didn’t need to know about this, and Dad especially didn’t. I knew the guard wouldn’t give up the chase easily, but when I finally stopped, I couldn’t hear his footsteps any more. All the lights were off in the house that I’d stopped outside. I went into their garden and crouched down behind the front hedge to listen. I waited for a minute or two, long enough to be sure that the coast was clear. I was safe.
I was sweating and still out of breath when I pushed the door of our flat open a few minutes later. ‘It’s me, I’m home,’ I called to Mam and Dad. I didn’t go in to say hi and went straight to my bedroom instead. If they asked, I’d tell them we’d been playing football. I sat down on the edge of the bed with my heart hammering in my chest so loud that I could hear it in my ears. Where were the others?
The knock on the front door made me jump. I froze where I was, as if whoever was standing outside might hear me if I moved as much as an inch.
‘Get that there, please, Philip, will you?’ Mam called from the couch. ‘Did you not tell your friends you were coming in for the night?’
It might have been Al or Shane, breathless as well, coming to check that I’d got away too and to tell me about their chase and how they’d managed to escape. But I had a bad feeling. It didn’t sound like the lads’ knock, a friendly knock. It was a man’s knock, an angry knock, looking for someone.
How had the guard figured out where I lived? He couldn’t have followed me. I’d definitely lost him before I came home. Maybe another guard had caught one of the lads and they were in the station now, and they’d had to tell them who was with them and where I lived.
Bam-bam-bam.
‘Philip, are you getting that?’ Mam asked again. ‘Don’t have me getting up, please.’
‘Yeah, I have it.’
It was better to get it myself anyway. At least then I could try to talk my way out of trouble before Mam and Dad realised that it was a guard at the door.
I took a deep breath and got my story straight, but when I opened the door, it wasn’t who I was expecting.
20
‘Do you mind if I come in for a minute?’ Colm asked. I hadn’t seen him since the afternoon when we’d spoken in his front garden. ‘I’m glad to see you’re still out keeping fit anyway.’
I ran my hand over my face to wipe the sweat away. My heart had just about stopped thumping after sprinting home, but it started again just as quickly when I saw Colm standing there. I hadn’t told Mam and Dad that I had been expelled from the academy, and they didn’t know that I hadn’t been training either. I had been out with Al and Shane in the evenings, and most Saturdays too, so they hadn’t suspected anything.
‘Who’s at the door, Philip?’ Mam popped her head out from the sitting room before I could find out why he had called or think up a good cover story. ‘Colm,’ she said, delighted. ‘Come on in, Phil’s inside here. You’ll have a cup of tea, will you? The kettle’s on.’
I followed the two of them back inside. Mam went into the kitchen to get the cups from the press, giving them a quick rub with a tea-towel while she waited for the kettle to finish boiling, and I showed Colm into the sitting room. Dad got up to shake his hand and gestured for him to make himself comfortable on the couch.
‘Well now, how’s everything going with the football?’ Dad asked as he sat back down. I was still standing over by the hall door, unsure what this was all about.
‘It’s actually just your parents that I wanted to speak to,’ Colm said to me, ‘if you wouldn’t mind giving us a minute, please.’
I had no idea why Colm had called, but if Dad spotted the look of confusion on my face, he completely ignored it. ‘Of course,’ he said, turning to me and nodding towards my room. ‘Close over the door there behind you, please, good lad.’
I did as I was told, but I left the sitting-room door open slightly and did the same with my bedroom door, hoping I might be able to catch part of the conversation without making it obvious. They spoke for about ten minutes before Dad called me back inside.
‘Have you anything you want to tell us?’ Dad asked while Mam topped up their cups with another drop of tea. I had lots of things that I should tell them but nothing that I particularly wanted to, but if I didn’t explain what was going on now, Colm surely would, so I went through the whole story from the beginning.
When I had finished, Mam said, ‘We know.’
‘How?’ Colm had told them already, I presumed.
‘Well, for one thing, you haven’t taken your boots out of your bag in weeks.’
‘Oh.’
‘Why didn’t you tell us what was going on?’ She sounded disappointed.
‘It’s grand. I didn’t want you to be worrying about me. The two of you have enough to be worrying about.’
I forgot for a moment that Colm was sitting there too, and I was afraid that I had said too much.
‘It’s okay,’ Mam said, reading my mind. ‘We explained everything to Colm.’
I glared at Mam. If I’d wanted Colm to know about our family business, I would have told him myself. ‘Just now?’ I asked.
Colm turned his chair slightly to face me. ‘No, I called over last week to see if you were okay and find out if you had fallen off the face of the earth,’ he said. ‘You were out, but I had a good chat with your mam and dad instead. I’m very sorry to hear about John. You must be so worried about him.’
It felt strange to hear someone else talking about John and his addiction, someone who wasn’t part of the family or Kev, who was the only other person that I had told. It still felt like something that other people shouldn’t know about, like we should have kept it to ourselves as a secret until it was sorted, and then we wouldn’t have to tell anybody at all.
‘Do you want to tell us what’s going on?’ Dad asked. ‘Why haven’t you been going to training?’
I wasn’t sure if I could explain without it all sounding a bit stupid. Part of it was because I was annoyed at myself for what had happened. But a lot of it was definitely embarrassment too. Everyone who knew me – my friends, the lads in school, our neighbours – knew me as Philly, the footballer who was going to play for Dublin someday. The next Colm Doyle, isn’t that what Mr O’Dea had said to me that night? Except that was all gone now, none of it was true any more, and without it, I didn’t know who I was supposed to be.
I kept thinking about the happiness on Mam’s face when I came home that night and she rushed out into the hall, waving the academy letter at me, or how excited Dad had been to rummage through all of the new gear that I had been sent. It had been a big deal for Colm too, and I had let all of them down by getting expelled. If I didn’t go back to football, I didn’t have to face it.
But I didn’t say any of those things. ‘I don’t feel like playing any more,’ I said. That was the best I could manage in answer to Dad’s question.
‘But you love football,’ Mam said. ‘That’s all you’ve ever wanted to do.’
‘Yeah, I wanted to play for Dublin, but it’s all a fix. If you’re from Ballymun, you have to be twice as good as everyone else just to get a fair chance in the first place. What’s the point?’ I really believed that was true, but then I remembered that Kev was in the academy and he seemed to be getting on okay.
‘So you’re giving up then?’ Dad said, his voice low. ‘Winners never quit and quitters never win; that’s what my da used to tell me all the time.’
Colm interrupted before I had a chance to get drawn into another one of Granddad’s life lessons. ‘If this is about the academy, I might be able to fix it.’
‘How?’ I said, curious. Gerry Mangan’s decision had seemed pretty final to me. I couldn’t see how there was any way back.
‘I rang Gerry again the other day, after your parents told me about John, and I explained the situation to him.’
I felt my face getting hot at the mention of John’s name and Gerry Mangan’s in the same sentence.
‘I thought it was important that he had all the facts,’ Colm continued. He looked to Mam and Dad for reassurance, and I could see that they agreed. ‘You shouldn’t have lashed out, but I think he’s having second thoughts about how he handled the whole situation. Unfortunately, the county board has some silly policy that means he can’t just recall you if he changes his mind.’
If this was good news, I was still waiting for the good bit.
‘But,’ he said optimistically, ‘Gerry is allowed to bring any new players into the academy once Féile is finished, so he’ll be there with the other coaches to scout all the games, and he’ll keep an eye out for you.’
‘Isn’t that brilliant news?’ Mam said. ‘You’ll be able to get your place back.’ All three of them seemed delighted, as though this would solve the problem, but I wasn’t so sure.
‘Look, Gerry understands,’ Colm assured me, ‘especially now that he knows what you’re dealing with and how you were provoked.’
‘You told him about John!’ I said angrily. ‘That wasn’t your information to go spreading around. You’re not part of this family.’
Colm looked stunned. He didn’t know how to respond. Dad intervened on his behalf. ‘Hang on a second now. Colm discussed it with us first, and we all agreed that telling Gerry was the right thing to do.’
‘That wasn’t your decision to make either,’ I protested, getting more upset. ‘Why do you think I changed my name the first day I went up there?’
‘You did what?’ Mam said.
‘I told them my name was Philly McMahon. I didn’t want anyone hearing the name Caffrey and realising my brother is John Caffrey, the guy with the heroin addiction.’
Mam’s face fell. I hadn’t planned to tell them like this – I hadn’t planned to tell them at all. I shouldn’t have said anything.
‘They’ll all know now.’ I glared at Colm. ‘But it doesn’t matter, I won’t be going back there anyway.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous – I’m sure Gerry won’t say a word,’ Dad said, but Colm looked flustered, clearly worried that he’d somehow managed to make a bad situation worse.
‘I’m sorry if I’ve overstepped,’ he said apologetically. ‘I was – we were – only trying to help.’
‘If you wanted to help, you wouldn’t have taken the captaincy off me,’ I snapped without missing a beat.
‘That’s enough, Philly, watch your mouth,’ Dad warned, raising his voice, and then nobody spoke for a few moments. There was a lot to take in. I felt the room closing in around me, but the door was right there. If I ran, I’d be gone before any of them could stop me.
‘Come up to training on Thursday,’ Colm suggested eventually. ‘The lads have been wondering where you’re gone. You know that this weekend is the first weekend of Féile, right?’
He was trying not to sound too pushy about it. I knew that Féile would be starting shortly, but I hadn’t realised that it was quite so soon.
‘We’ve Na Fianna on Saturday,’ he added, hoping that would get my attention. Na Fianna were our biggest local rival. Their home pitch was just down the road, and a lot of their players went to school with the Glasnevin lads on our team.
‘You’ve loads of good players. Why do you care so much if I show up or not?’ I said. Players stopped coming to training and dropped off the team all the time. Sometimes they came back and sometimes they didn’t. But I found it hard to imagine Colm calling around to where they lived and sitting down with their parents to try to convince them.
He put his cup down and moved it over to one side. ‘I’ll tell you a story that I don’t tell many people,’ he said. ‘I try not to think about it too much.
‘I didn’t play Féile in my year. I had a stupid disagreement with the man who was managing the team. He wanted me to play at full-back but I really wanted to play in midfield. He was trying to pick the best team, and I thought I knew better than him. I was thirteen.’ He shook his head at the memory of it. ‘In the end, he told me that it was up to me: I could either play at full-back or I could go and play soccer. You know how you’re always listening to me talk about opportunities and good decisions. Well, that was one of the worst decisions I ever made.’ He tapped his knuckles on the table. ‘I was never any good at soccer.’
‘Is that a real story?’ I asked.
‘Yep. That was nearly twenty years ago,’ he said, ‘and even though I went back playing the next season, and I’ve been very lucky to have a wonderful career since, I still regret it. You only get one Féile year, and once it was gone, it was gone, and I never got it back again.’
Mam stared at me as he told his story, waiting for me to draw a line under everything and agree to go back training, but I couldn’t look her in the eye. It was obvious how much Féile meant to Colm. Not that long ago, it had been every bit as important to me, but I just didn’t care about it any more.
I was determined to have the last word. If Colm didn’t want me as his captain, I didn’t want him as my coach; I wanted him to feel the same way that I felt.
‘I’m finished with football. See you, Colm,’ I said, and I turned and walked out of the room.
21
Our near miss with the guards didn’t seem to bother Al and Shane at all. For a couple of weeks afterwards, any time I saw a squad car coming, I pulled my tracksuit top up to cover the bottom half of my face and dipped my head, just in case they recognised me. I’m sure it only made me look more sketchy.
One chase by a garda through the streets of Ballymun was enough for me, but it didn’t stop the others from plotting and planning. The summer nights got longer, and they spent them talking about what they would do differently ‘the next time’. The rest of the time we spent sitting out in the field, trying to pick a spot so that Al and Shane could have a drink and a smoke without risking running into their parents.
That’s exactly what we were doing, nothing out of the ordinary, on the night that the man approached us.
‘That stuff will rot your brains, lads,’ he warned, arriving into the middle of our conversation without anyone noticing he was there.
