Charlie Savage by Roddy Doyle (Vintage 2019)

 

Talk to Joe.

–I will in me hole!

It’s not a sudden thing, or a late vocation. I’ve been shouting at the eejits on the radio all my life. Some men learn how to play the uilleann pipes from their fathers; others are taught how to mend fishing nets, how to keep bees or maim cattle. My da showed me how to shout.

He spent long happy hours instructing me on the correct use of the word ‘gobshite’. He didn’t know he was doing this; I was just looking at him, and listening. But, nevertheless, that was what he did. I sat in the kitchen with him and learnt all about the different categories of gobshite. There was the ‘bloody’ gobshite, the ‘out and out’ gobshite, and the ‘complete and utter’ gobshite. There was a gobshite for every occasion, a label for every man he shouted at. A younger man just starting out in his career as a gobshite – a newly elected TD, say, or an economist just home from America who wore a cravat instead of a tie – he had ‘the makings of a gobshite’. There was still hope for him, but not much. The makings of a gobshite almost always rose through the ranks to become a complete and utter gobshite.

He never shouted at women. Now, there weren’t many women on the wireless back then but he wouldn’t have shouted at them anyway. In my father’s world there was no such thing as a female gobshite.

Cowboys and Indians by Joseph O'Connor (Sinclair-Stevenson 1991)

Underneath him Eddie felt the churn of the sea, far below the car deck. He imagined the cast cold hulk of the mailboat ploughing through the water in the darkness, an explosion of white metal and froth. He could almost see it, rearing into the air, smashing down into the waves, hammering the water like a weapon. And for some reason that brought a hot tingle to Eddie's face.

It was a good-looking face, there was no doubt about that. Eddie's face looked like something out of a Pre-Raphaelite painting, or so Jennifer had once told him, the fucking pseud. First-year History of Art in UCD and Jennifer thought she was Melvyn sodding Bragg or something. Still, no matter what she said, Eddie knew he was a looker. He said looks weren't important. He said it every morning when he preened himself in the mirror and every night too, when he brushed his gleaming teeth. He said it at every available opportunity, to anybody who'd listen. But extremely good-looking people always says that, and they usually look particularly good when they're saying it. Eddie was a head turner. He always had been, he was now, and with just a fraction of the good fortune that always goes with good looks, he reckoned he would probably would be till he dropped. And even then, like his hero Sid Vicious, Eddie'd be a good-looking corpse.

Lamb by Bernard MacLaverty (Penguin Books 1980)

'Ah, Brother Sebastian. I was expecting you.'

Michael began, the words becoming slurred in his haste to get them out before his courage failed him.
'Brother Benedict, I must protest in the strongest possible terms about the . . . the thrashing you have just given Owen Kane.'

'And why is that?'

'He did not sign his name to any slogan.'

'Brother Sebastian, I'll thank you to calm yourself.'

'Did you say that the boy signed his initials to some graffiti?'

'I did.'

'O.K. is a slogan itself. They just add it to things.'

Brother Benedict took off his glasses, folded the legs flat and rubbed into the corners of his eyes with finger and thumb.

Brother Sebastian, do you think I'm a fool? Credit me with a little lore intelligence.'

Michael did not know how to react. He was confused.

'You know and I know,' said Brother Benedict, 'that we could never find the real culprit. By now the boys know that punishment has been meted out. Someone has got it in the neck. It may deter others from doing the like again, for fear their mates get it. The O.K. is just a little irony of mine. "Benny dies O.K." Now the boys know that Benny has risen.' He bunched his big fist and swung it in a slow punch, clicking his tongue at the supposed moment of impact.

'K.O.,' he said with satisfaction.

For the next week Owen had to try and clean the slogan off with a pad of steel wool. To reach it he had to stand on a stool.

The Woman Who Walked Into Doors by Roddy Doyle (Penguin 1996)

I missed the 80s. I haven't a clue. It's just a mush. I hear a song on the radio from the 60s or 70s and I can remember something that happened to me; it has nothing to do with liking the song, Song Sung Blue - I'm doing my homework, listening to Radio Luxemburg , the chart show on Monday night, with Carmel and Denise. I'm drawing a map of Ireland, the rivers of Ireland. My blue marker is nearly wasted and I haven't got to Ulster yet. Lily The Pink - I'm sitting on my mother's knee, watching my Uncle Martin singing Delilah; I have a toothache. Somebody else sang Lily The Pink before or after him; I can't remember who - one of my cousins. All The Young Dudes - I'm watching Charlo washing himself at the sink. He still has some of his summer tan. But I don't know any songs from the 80s; they mean nothing - and the radio was on all the time. What did I do in the 80s? I walked into doors. I got up off the floor. I became an alcoholic. I discovered that I was poor, that I'd no right to the hope I'd started with. I was going nowhere, straight there. Trapped in a house that would never be mine. With a husband who fed on my pain. Watching my children going nowhere with me; the cruellest thing of the lot. No hope to give them. They saw him throw me across the kitchen. They saw him put a knife to my throat. Their father; my husband.

The Van by Roddy Doyle (Penguin Books 1991)

"Jimmy Sr looked carefully to make sure that he'd seen it right. The net was shaking, and O'Leary was covered in Irishmen. He wanted to see it again though. Maybe they were all beating the shite out of O'Leary for missing. No, though; he'd scored. Ireland were through to the quarter-finals and Jimmy Sr started crying."