The Marble Collector

14

Commies. The poor boy’s marble. They were the first kind of marble. Made of clay, not always round and perfect but they were cheap and common, and they were what got every child playing outside during World War I. Then the aggies and porcelain came along, and glass marbles that were prettier, no two alike. Glass is my preference. But there are also steelies. I have a few of them too. Steelies are chrome-coated solid metal, like knights in battle, and they make deadly shooters. They’re heavy and fast and send opponents’ marbles flying out of the ring. That’s me today. I’m surrounded by glass and porcelain, maybe even a little clay, but I’m the steelie. I’m twenty-four, it’s my wedding day and I’m sending all the men in Gina’s life out of the ring.

Iona parish church is the venue for the big day. Gina’s local church where she was baptised, received first confession, first communion as a little bride, was confirmed and took the pledge and now finally to get married. The same priest who carried out all those landmark events in her life marries us today and looks at me in the same way he has since the moment we met.

He fucking hates me.

What kind of family has a priest as a family friend? Gina’s kind of family. He buried her dad, comforted her ma on many late nights of free whisky and advice and he looks at me now like the bastard who’s taking his place in the family clan. I said it to Gina. Told her he was looking at me oddly. She said it’s because he’s known her since she was born, he’s protective, he’s fatherly. I didn’t say so but I think it’s the look of a father who needs to be locked up and given a good beating.

Gina says I’m paranoid about most of her friends not liking me. Maybe I am. I think they look at me funny. Or maybe it’s the fact they’re so polite, like I can’t figure out who they really are, because they’re not shouting across from me at the table or pinning me down and telling me what they really think, that makes me suspicious of them. There was no politeness in my family, no smokescreens. Not in my house, not in my school, not on my street. I know where I stand with them, but the priest doesn’t like me and I know it. I know it from the way that he looks at me when Gina’s not looking. Two men, two stags who at any moment want to crash heads, tear each other’s antlers off. I was glad Gina’s dad is dead, so I wouldn’t have to deal with that male-ownership bullshit, the fella who’s ‘stealing’ the daughter away, but I didn’t expect to have the issue with the family priest.

And the family doctor.

Jesus, him too. What kind of family has a family doctor? Gina’s kind of family.

When we were sick, Ma had her own ways of getting us better. Baking soda and water for sunburn, butter and sugar for a cough, brown sugar and boiling water for constipation. I remember I’d a lump on my knee so Mattie dipped it in boiling water then hit it with a book; simple, it disappeared. A pimple on Hamish’s nose was cut off with scissors then treated with aftershave. Iodine for cuts. Gargled salt water for throats. Rarely were we on antibiotics. Rarely were we with a doctor for enough time as to strike up the friendship Gina and her ma have with their GP. No family doctor and definitely none that would care who the fuck we marry. But that’s Gina’s family. Even worse, or better, I’m not sure, I’ll be part of their family. I can hear Hamish chuckling. I hear it as I fix my tie in the toilet and prepare for the reception that Gina’s grandda is paying for.

‘Best day of your life?’ Angus asks cheekily, taking a piss beside me in the urinal, disturbing my thoughts.

‘Yeah.’

I’d asked Angus to be my best man, wished Hamish was here to do it even though he’d be a thousand times more risky and send every family anything running from the reception with his speech. No, that’s wrong. Hamish was subtle. He wasn’t like the rest, he observed, knew how to hustle, judge the atmosphere and then make his move. It didn’t mean he wouldn’t do anything wrong, but at least he’d think about it beforehand, not shoot out the first thing that came into his head like the others. Five years since he died and he’s still alive in my head. But Angus was the closest thing to Hamish and if I didn’t involve my family in the wedding in some way there’d be blue murder. If I’d really had the choice I’d have asked my mate Jimmy, but it’s complicated there. Shame, really, seeing as he’s the person I most enjoy talking to.

I talk to him more than anyone else. We’re always talking about something, as long as the something is about nothing. I could do that all day with him. He’s the same age as me, he’s into marbles too, that’s how we met, and we play marbles a few times a week. Only grown man I know who does. He says he knows a few others, we joke about putting a team together, going for the International title. I don’t know. Maybe we actually will some day.

It felt odd, not telling Jimmy about today. Friends would do that, wouldn’t they? Not us though. He doesn’t exactly spill the beans on himself though either; just enough for me to figure it out eventually, but he can be so bloody cryptic. I like it this way. Why? I’ve asked myself that a lot. I like it when I can keep myself to myself. I can control what people know about me. The boy from Scotland who moved to Dublin for everyone to talk about, slept on the floor for a year with everyone talking, before moving to Mattie’s house after a quick marriage with everyone talking – and they were right to, Ma’s baby Tommy came ‘early’; then us as kids, wild as anything; and then, much later, after Hamish died, the talk, everybody talking about what he did or didn’t do. Everyone summing him up in one phrase or one word or one look like they knew him, but they never did and never could. Not like I did. I don’t even think my other brothers knew Hamish like I did. And I wanted to get away from all that. All that talk. I wanted to be who I wanted to be, because I wanted to. No reasons, no talk. Hamish did it, but he left the country, I don’t know if I could do that.

Get me away from all of them but not too far. They drive me crazy but I need them. I need to see them at least, from afar, know that they’re all right.

If I’d wanted to marry a girl I’d fingered when I was fourteen I’d have stayed put but I didn’t. I was twenty-three years old, ready for marriage, and leaving my home turf to meet the likes of Gina was better. Not that I travelled far. Fifteen minutes’ walk away. Just a new community is all. And we didn’t come from nothing either. Lived on a farm in Scotland till the age of five, Ma met Da when she moved there to be a nanny, then after sleeping on Aunty Sheila’s floor, we moved to a nice house too, terraced house on St Benedict’s Gardens, around the corner from our stomping ground Dorset Street, Mattie’s family home that he got to keep when his ma and da kicked the bucket. Mattie does grand with the butcher’s, all of us working there now, giving every penny that we earn to Ma, until marriage. But it’s not where you’re raised, it’s how you’re raised, and Gina’s ma raised her differently to how Ma raised us. Raising men is different, I’ve heard Ma say when her and Mrs Lynch were talking about her girls.

I wanted someone better than me. I didn’t know until later that was because I wanted to be better, like she’d rub off on me. Not more money but the politeness, the fucking genuine way she cared about what absolute tosspots were saying. We both lost our das at a young age so you can’t say she had a sheltered life, no child should have to live through that, but everything she did was within three streets of her house. The same for her friends. School, shops, work. Her da ran a button factory, they lived in one of those big houses in Iona, plenty of room for lots of children that they didn’t get to have because he died, dropped dead of a heart attack one day. Her ma turned their house into a guest house, they do well on match days with Croker nearby, and Gina works there with her. Always the perfect hosts. Polite. Welcoming. Every time I meet them it’s as if they’re standing at their guest desk, no matter where they are.

I knew Gina’s da died and I used that to chat her up. I used my da dying to get her, making up a load of old crap about how much I missed him, felt him around me, wondered if he was looking down on me and all that type of thing. I’ve learned that women love that stuff. It felt kind of nice to be that lad talking like that but I’ve never felt Da around me. Not once. Not ever. Not when I needed him. I’m not bitter about that, Da’s dead, dead’s dead, and when you’re dead you’d think you’d want to just enjoy being dead without having to worry about the people you left behind. Worrying is for the living.

Hamish, though, I don’t know, sometimes I think it with him, about him hanging around. If I’m about to do something that maybe I shouldn’t, I hear him, that smoker’s laugh that he had at sixteen, or I hear him warning me, the sound of my name coming through teeth clamped tight together, or I feel his fist against my ribs as he tries to stop me. But that’s just my memory, isn’t it? Not him actually meddling, helping me out, like he’s a ghost.

I could have talked to Gina about Hamish but I didn’t. I chose Da. Easier to make stuff up that way. It doesn’t make me a liar, or a bad person. I wouldn’t be the first lad to get a girl just out of saying things she wanted to hear. Angus got Caroline when he pretended for six weeks to have a broken leg after she ran into him on her bicycle. She kept visiting, feeling all guilty and every time she was coming he’d run in from playing football in the alley and leg it to the couch and put his leg up on cushions. We all had to go along with it. I think Ma thought it was funny, though she didn’t smile. But she didn’t tell him to stop either. I think she liked Caroline visiting. They used to talk. I think Ma liked having a girl in the house. Angus got her in the end. Duncan, too. He pretended to like Abba for an entire year. Him and Mary even had it as their first dance on their wedding day before he told her that night, drunk, that he hated it and never wanted to hear it again. She ran to the toilet crying and it took four girls and a make-up kit to get her out.

On our first proper date I took Gina to an Italian restaurant on Capel Street. I thought she’d like something exotic like that even though pasta wasn’t my thing. I told her about playing marbles then and she laughed, thinking I was messing.

‘Ah come on, Fergus, seriously, what do you really play? Football?’

It was then. I didn’t tell her, for a few reasons. I was embarrassed that she’d laughed. I felt uncomfortable in the restaurant, the waiters made me nervous, were watching me like I was going to rob the knife and fork. The prices on the menu were more than I thought they’d be and she’d ordered starter and main course. I was going to have to think of something before she went for dessert. Anyway when she laughed, I thought, yeah maybe she’s right, maybe it’s stupid, maybe I won’t play any more. And then I thought I can still play and have her, and that’s the way it went, thinking it’s no big deal keeping them separate, it’s not as if I’m cheating on her, though I had a few times by then. Waiting for a virgin wife, I had to be relieved a few times by Fiona Murphy. I swear she knew how desperate I was as soon as she’d see me. I didn’t bring Gina to my local, too many reasons, Fiona Murphy being one of them and every other girl I was with. Fiona literally had me in the palm of her hand. Her da had a job in the Tayto factory and she always had cheese-and-onion breath. But now that I’m married I’ll have to change all that. A vow’s a vow.

I’ve been with Gina for one year and she hasn’t met my family much in that time. Enough times to not cause outrage on either side, but I know it’s not enough. Short visits, quick visits. Pop into the house, drop by a party. Never let her get to know them, because then she’d get to know me, or the me she might think I am. I want her to know me through being with me.

‘There’s some drama going on with one of Gina’s bridesmaids,’ Angus says. ‘The one with the kegs for tits.’

I laugh. ‘Michelle.’

‘She says her boyfriend just got up and left the church, saw him leaving before she’d made her grand entrance.’

I make a face. ‘That’s a bit harsh.’

‘All the girls are in the toilet trying to fix her make-up now.’

I make a face again. But I’m not really listening to Angus, I’m concentrating more on what I’m about to say. The right thing in the right way.

‘Angus, you know the speech.’

‘Yep, got it right here.’ He takes it out of his pocket, a few pages, more pages than I was hoping for, waves it in my face proudly. ‘Spent all summer writing this. Spoke to a few of your old school friends. Remember Lampy? He had a few tales to tell.’

Which made sense as to why Lampy apologised to me after the ceremony.

Angus tucks it back into the inside of his pocket. He taps it to make sure it’s safe.

‘Yeah well… just remember that, er, Gina’s family and friends are… well, you know, they’re not like us.’

I know they’re the wrong words as soon as I say them. I know from the look on his face. It has been glaringly obvious they are not ‘like us’ all day. They’re quieter for a start. Every second word isn’t a swear word. They use other words to express themselves.

I try to backtrack. ‘It’s just that, they’re not exactly like us. You know? They’ve a different humour. Us Boggs and Doyles, we have a different way. So I was just wondering if you could go easy in the speech. You know what I mean? Gina’s grandparents are old. Very fuckin’, you know, religious.’

He knows. He looks at me with absolute contempt. The last time I saw this look on his face, it was followed with a head butt.

‘Sure,’ he says simply. Then he looks me up and down like he has no idea who I am, as though it’s not his own brother standing in front of him, in a puddle of piss. ‘Good luck, Fergus.’ Then he walks out of the toilet leaving me feeling like absolute shit.

His speech is boring. It is the most mind-numbingly boring speech in history. No jokes, just all formality. He didn’t reach into his pocket for his speech, all those handwritten pages that I know he spent weeks on and probably practised all night. It is hands down the worst speech ever. No emotion. No love. I could have asked a stranger on the street to do a better job. Which maybe is his point. A stranger, who doesn’t even know me.

Gina’s ma, the family doctor and the family priest all think he is ‘terrific’.

Ma’s dressed in the same outfit she wore to Angus’s wedding. Something else to Duncan’s wedding a few months ago and then back to this dress for mine. It’s pea green, a coat, a shift dress and low heels. A sparkly clip in her hair. Her best brooch. Da gave it to her, I remember it. A Tara brooch with green stones. She’s wearing make-up, powder that makes her paler and red lipstick that’s stuck to her teeth. She isn’t dancing. I remember her dancing all night at Angus’s. Her and Mattie do a good jive, the only time I ever see them physical with each other. At Duncan’s we had to carry her home. Here, she’s sitting down, stiff back, a glass of brandy in front of her, and I’m wondering what Angus said to her. Mattie’s watching the girls dancing, tongue running along his lips, like he’s choosing from a menu. Ma and Mattie are alone at the round table. All of my brothers and their other halves headed off early with Angus; I assume he’d told them what I said. Something like telling him not to be a Boggs, pretend to be someone else. But that wasn’t exactly what I’d said, was it?

That’s fine with me though. I can relax more without them. No one is going to go flying across the room and smashing into a table because of a funny look or an intimated tone.

I go over and sit with Ma and we have a chat. Then as we’re talking she slaps me hard across the cheek.

‘Ma, what the…?’ I hold my stinging cheek, looking around to see who’s seen. Too many people.

‘You’re not him.’

‘What?’ My heart starts to pound. ‘What are you talking about?’

She slaps me again. Same cheek.

‘You’re not him,’ she says again.

The way she looks at me.

‘Come on.’ She throws her purse at Mattie, and he jumps to action, eyes off the dancing girls, tongue back inside. ‘We’re going.’

By midnight my family are all gone.

‘Long way to get home,’ Gina’s ma says, politely, as if trying to make me feel better, but it doesn’t.

I tell myself I don’t care, I can dance, I can chat, I can relax with them all gone. The hard man, the unbreakable, unbeatable steelie.