Read Online Double Talk by Patrick Warner - Free Book Online Page B

accounted for the budgie-coloured streak on the left side of his salt and pepper moustache. He had an English accent, and his diction was as theatrical as Richard Burton’s. Everything he said seemed to have simmered for a few years in a hot-pot of bitterness and contempt. He tried to teach us about irony, which — to borrow a phrase from a Newfoundland satirist — was like trying to catch eels in a barrel of snot. I mean, if the actual meaning of what was being said was the opposite of what was literally being said, then how could you know what was really being said — huh? I knew my ability to make that distinction would eventually come, and on that day I would be able to say that I was now an educated man. Thus irony was also a kind of sales pitch. And was Professor Hutchins’ manner of dress meant to be ironic? Absurd was the sight of my black-robed teacher striding around a prefabricated classroom in St. John’s, Newfoundland, as though he were in Cambridge. Boredom soon followed.
    But boredom, I discovered, could be relieved by a number of methods — dope was effective. Also terrifically entertaining were the musty paperbacks in Wallace’s bedroom: Anaïs Nin’s Little Birds , Jerzy Kosinski’s The Painted Bird , Phillip Roth’s The Breast and John Rechy’s City of Night . Novelty and naughtiness had never been closer to hand: Playboy and Penthouse , banned in Ireland, could be bought in any shop, though you would not find the magazines Wallace kept in the back of his bedroom closet. As well, condoms could be had from any drugstore, if you had the nerve. Beer and wine could not be found at the supermarket, though beer could be bought in any corner store; wine lived at the liquor store; you had to be nineteen to buy any of it.
    But the drink supply was never a problem because every second weekend Wallace and Geoff arrived at the house, bringing with them every kind of potion. They also brought trailer loads of furniture and household wares. Geoff gave me my own Sandinista apron and taught me how to cook chili and spaghetti. Wallace installed a brilliant stereo in the sitting room, with a pulsing green liquid crystal display, and four fifty-watt floor speakers. The next week he brought half his record collection to town. It was an uneasy marriage of the old and the new: Steely Dan, Joan Armatrading, Van Morrison, Roxy Music, The Beatles and David Bowie. But also Soft Cell, The Clash, Duran Duran, Culture Club, the Eurythmics and The Thompson Twins. I sniffed at it: no ska, no reggae? Where was their Village People album?
    Most weekends we didn’t spend much time at the house; instead, we went out to restaurants that were bars and bars that were restaurants: Spaghetti House, Napoli Pizza, The Curry House, but most often to the Side Street where I ate diabolical amounts of cannelloni and where Wallace and Geoff successfully pooh-poohed all attempts by the serving staff to get me to show an ID. I was still two years short of legal drinking age. We went to the Side Street so often that I couldn’t believe it when, a few months later, Violet told me she had worked there at that time, usually three nights a week, and remembered seeing me there. I racked my brains but could not remember seeing her.
    I could say I lived alone, but I didn’t live alone. After only one month on my own, loneliness moved in with me. I was ashamed of her and lied when Wallace or Geoff asked me if I found it hard being by myself so much. I said I didn’t find it hard at all — a pretence easy to keep up while they were around, but one that collapsed as soon as they departed on Sunday night, slamming the door behind them.
    Loneliness was an obese giantess. Her fingernail was the hot-red receiver of the phone that sat on the hallway radiator. I was familiar only with Irish phones, heavy monstrosities that seemed to be made from black lava, with a fly-reel dialler on the base; they were