Breakfast on Pluto (1998) by Patrick McCabe

Author:Patrick McCabe [McCabe, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, General
ISBN: 9780330352932
Google: IViMIdGieQAC
Amazon: B000OEOC4W
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Published: 1998-01-13T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The Incident Behind the Creamery

A lot of people said that I slapped her across the face – I did not! I said: ‘Look, Martina! All I want to do is talk to you! If you will only listen to me – all it will take is five minutes, I promise you!’ I know I ought to have had the sense not to ask her that. But now that I’d gone so far, there wasn’t an awful lot I could do. All I remember is taking her by the arms and saying: ‘Martina! There are things you should know about. These people are just using you! You’re only fifteen! Do you think any of them will care if you bring an unwanted child into the world? You know what they want, don’t you? Don’t you? You know all they want!’ I think what probably upset me more than anything was her shouting out Smigs’ name. All I could hear was ‘Smigs! Smigs!’ and that was why I shook her. I mean – you have no idea what he was like! Once – not long after I came back to Tyreelin – I was standing in the shop queue and he lifted up my dress with a bicycle pump. I was sure it was all a joke you see and that the people were well-used to me by now. (I was wrong, of course – I can see that now. The only reason the ‘Hello, honky tonks’ and ‘Ooh, you are awfuls’ had stopped was that they wanted absolutely nothing to do with me.) Which I hope explains why I turned around and smiled at him. It was just a big, completely unoffended smile but when I saw the expression on his face, it frightened me, it really and truly did. All I can say is that the eyes seemed dead – frighteningly dead in his head. All I wanted to do then was just run out of the shop and stay locked in the house for days. Not even tell Charlie about it. Just lock myself in my room and try not to think of it, hoping it would go away, the thought of his face. So you can imagine how I felt now when straight away Martina started it again. ‘Smigs! Smigs!’ was all you could hear. I don’t care what lies she told around the village – I didn’t slap her. It was just a sharp, firm tap, that’s all, solely to calm her down.

I had heard them saying that Smigs had been in a fight in the Sports Centre and had opened some person’s face with a straight razor. That was what kept going through my mind as we stood there behind the creamery, both white, facing one another.

‘Please listen to me, Martina! Stay away from Tommy McNamee! Listen to me, please!’ I pleaded, but she wouldn’t. ‘Let me go,’ she said, ‘you get your hands off me now and let me go, you fucking queer!’

All that

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