Gavin shrugged.
I’m just no over-confident. I think jobs are a thing of the past in this country, even in the building game.
So what’re you chucking yours in for? Gavin coughed slightly, and he coughed again, then he put his arm back round Elizabeth’s shoulders. She looked as if she was about to close her eyes.
Eh … I dont like being forced into things. Plus them transferring me to a different school just when I feel in some ways as if I’m getting used to things. If they would leave me to get on with things myself! You know me brother, I dont like being told what to do!
Gavin nodded.
I dont like being forced to live my life a certain way.
…
I dont.
…
I prefer to make up my own mind.
Mm.
Life’s too short to let people push you about all the time.
Gavin nodded. He inhaled on the cigarette and exhaled the smoke towards the television screen, away from Elizabeth.
That’s what I think anyway.
Aye … Gavin tapped ash onto the ashtray and Patrick squinted at the television screen. Gavin said, So you’re getting pushed about?
Aye.
Mm.
I am.
I believe ye. Gavin nodded and his tongue flicked out his mouth and licked his lips; he took one more drag on the cigarette and nipped the burning ash into the ashtray, laid the good piece down on the tiled fireplace. He said to John. Away and see when tea’ll be ready!
John did so at once, leaving the door wide open, then the thump thump thump as he raced back … Mummy says she shouted a wee minute ago! Dinner’s on the table waiting! He laughed and rushed back to the kitchenette.
After a moment Gavin said, I never heard her did you? He got to his feet with Elizabeth clinging onto him and he hoisted her up so that she was leaning her head against his neck with her arms roundabout him. She gazed at Patrick as he followed them out of the living room and across to the kitchenette.
Nicola was eating. She was sitting at the small three-sided table that was affixed to the wall. The two places beside her had been set for the children. She said to Gavin: I thought you and Pat would prefer to eat in the room.
We could’ve set the table for everybody, he replied.
Nicola nodded. He had seated Elizabeth on her stool and John was up seated on his and already digging in with his knife and fork. Gavin passed a plate of food to Pat.
Thanks for the eh … Patrick said to Nicola.
Dont be daft, she said.
The two men returned to the room without speaking. Then Gavin returned to the kitchenette. He was gone almost five minutes. Patrick cleared the cans and remaining bottles from the dining table, stacking them on the floor. Gavin came back. He lifted his plate, balanced it on his lap and ate while watching the television. It was the news showing and Patrick glanced at it too. A couple of items were of interest and the subject of the Centralamerican assassination recurred. At one stage he was set to comment but changed his mind. Gavin was obviously not in the mood for conversation. And politics was the last subject on Earth; especially if it called for a dialogue with the brother on a basis of equality. Gavin didnt wish to speak to his young brother, especially on a basis of equality. His young brother had a good sort of middle-class job and a good sort of middle-classish wage whereas he had fuck all. His young brother could make all the comments and criticisms he had a mind to, then walk along to the licensed grocer and buy a bottle of whisky and a dozen cans of superlager — just about the most expensive lager in the entire premises. So what was the point in talking to him, to somebody like him.
And that was precisely the case. Patrick was somebody like himself. It didni actually matter a fuck that he was Pat Doyle a young brother. He was not an individual. So what right did he have to be treated as such. None. He had no rights at all. He had sold his rights for a wheen of pennies, a large wheen of pennies. Alison was correct after all with that Judas Iscariot patter, it was just that Patrick had misunderstood her context. And Gavin was correct to think as he did. Good teacher or bad teacher it made no difference. He was an article that was corrupt. He was representative of corruption, representative of a corrupt and repressive society which operated nicely and efficiently as an effect of the liberal machinations of such as himself, corruptio optimi pessima, not that he was approaching the best but just a person who had certain tools of the higher-educational processes at his command yet persisted in representing a social order that was not good and was not beneficent to those who have nothing. What right did he have to be treated differently to any member of the fucking government or polis or the fucking law courts in general who sentence you to prison. Doyle had sold his rights.
There was not an answer. It was most depressing. Gavin had never asked him the question of course. But only because he loved Pat. Only because he felt pity for him. He knew there was not any answer that the young brother could make. Look at the food on the plate. He did not have an answer to give. Most depressing. Most depressing. Tasty food as well it was nice ox liver and mashed potatoes and carrots and cabbage. Very very tasty indeed, just the occasional splash of gravy onto his trousers if a bit of something fell off his fork. It was most depressing. He did not know what to do. Not any longer, he just didni know. He didni know what was right and what was not right, what was wrong and what was not wrong that being not wrong, that being right
He did not know what to do. An answer could be to walk out on it all, to get away completely and get the tonsils straightened out. Get the tonsils straightened out. The idea of heading across the channel to France and driving on down south via the Basque country and Spain, maybe stopping off to see Eric in Anglia. There was a screech of brakes outside and Pat was up on his feet and over to the window immediately but much of his vision was obscured because of the fucking veranda. But his motor was okay whatever it was. He could just see the rear bumper of a van in the middle of the street, not all that far from his but absolutely nothing to do with it. Possibly a dog or cat had dashed out and forced the guy or woman to slam on the emergency brakes. The van moved off. Patrick stared but could see nothing. That bad habit cats have of hiding up the insides of a mudguard and then dashing out for no apparent reason.
Gavin was looking across.
Nothing — no that I can see anyway.
A wee boy got knocked down last week, did you hear? He’s still in intensive care. It was a paki that was driving.
Pardon?
A wee boy got knocked down, it was a paki that was driving the car.
The car that knocked down the wee boy?
Aye. Gavin had stopped eating. He placed the plate in beneath his chair, reached for a cigarette.
Patrick had stopped eating as well because his stomach had dropped out and what he had taken already was close to being on the carpet because this was just so bad it was barely possible to say a word but that it had to be said and faced up to. He stared at his big brother. His big brother was staring at the screen and he was fucking poised there what a challenge, knowing fine well what he had done, fucking bastard. Patrick breathed out and shut his eyelids but not to screw them up, seeing the redness of the interior lids, the blood no doubt. He was not going to carry on with any of this sort of shite. His stomach, the insides, were just fucking it’s amazing, amazing
where’s the whisky. But I dont want a whisky with that evil bastard because this is evil this is the existence of pure evil, a putrefication, a putrefaction of the spirit, the spirit of life but I dont feel like crying I feel like fucking battering but who the fuck to batter, who do I batter,