Read Online Driving Big Davie (Dan Starkey) by Colin Bateman - Free Book Online
Authors: Colin Bateman
Tags: FIC050000
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got a blast of the hot air that I realised why he was dripping.
Heat. HEAT. We Irish aren't built for it. An analysis of one hundred years of Irish weather shows conclusively that we get one decent day a year and drizzle for the rest of the time. Warm days in Ireland are often described as 'close', but in reality they're about as close to being muggy as a cripple is to skateboarding down Everest. I walked out of the terminal and got slapped round the face by hundreds of Fahrenheit, not to mention the centigrade; they then drenched me in sweat for daring to hang around looking gormless. We were, of course, dressed for a summer's day in Belfast, black T-shirts, black jeans, black zip-up jackets and filthy attitudes. We looked more like we were waiting for a Stranglers reunion gig than a cab to the holiday capital of the world.
Davie took a final drag of his cigarette and said: 'Sorry.'
'What for?'
'Getting pissed. It's the smoking. I can't handle nine hours without a cigarette. I've got so many nicotine patches on I look like Pongo.'
'Pongo?'
'Hundred and One Dalmations. I'll be fine after a sleep.'
'Never worry,' I said. 'C'mon. Let's find a taxi.'
Davie dozed off, his head bumping gently against the window, as we were driven towards Orlando. I watched him in the fading light. We were the same age, but there was something still quite boyish about him. We had prized him in our youth for his ability to get served in off-licences while under age, but it was the only time he had actually looked older than any of us; in fact it wasn't older, it was taller. The rest of us had gotten tall as well, but we'd also aged, some of us quite dramatically. But Davie remained just Big Davie. Big Davie with the cavalier attitude to life and, as I was beginning to fear, a cavalier attitude towards the truth.
What he had said on the plane had kick-started a process of sobriety in me, sucked the benefits of drink from my soul and left the nag of a hangover in my head, which wasn't helped by the rap from the radio the cab driver insisted on blasting out. Davie started to snore.
Maybe I was just being supersensitive. Maybe I was jealous that he'd had his way with Karen Malloy. Maybe he was just pissed and mixed up. Perhaps it was as innocent as that. He was supposed to be on honeymoon with the love of his life, but she'd left him within sight of the altar — that was bound to fuck up your head. Add huge amounts of alcohol, deprive of nicotine, ascend to thirty-six thousand feet, then wait for hallucination to kick in. He had confused fantasy and reality, and come out with Karen Malloy.
Perhaps he didn't know she was dead.
Perhaps when he sobered up I'd tell him that she'd been virtually cut in two by an articulated lorry outside the newspaper office where I was then working. That she'd been on her way to a job interview, that where we might have ended up working together, I had instead ended up going to her funeral. I might have flirted innocently with her, become her confidant. We might have exploded the Harry and Sally myth that men couldn't be friends with women without sex rearing its ugly head. Or we might have gone at it like rabbits, Patricia be damned. Even in the fleeting glimpse I had of her as she crossed the road to our office that day I had registered that she was more beautiful as an adult than she had been as a girl. The old woman in the park had been wrong. There was nothing small village about this girl. She looked magnificent. She had gone blonde; she was wearing a fine business suit which also managed to show off her figure; she had breasts that could poke your eyes out; and then she passed out of my field of vision, and half a minute later she was dead. The next time I saw her she was in her coffin, her cheeks puffed up with cotton wool and somewhere beneath her funeral shroud her legs were stitched back onto her torso. I watched the wooden box shudder along a moving track and then come to a halt while we sang
Heat. HEAT. We Irish aren't built for it. An analysis of one hundred years of Irish weather shows conclusively that we get one decent day a year and drizzle for the rest of the time. Warm days in Ireland are often described as 'close', but in reality they're about as close to being muggy as a cripple is to skateboarding down Everest. I walked out of the terminal and got slapped round the face by hundreds of Fahrenheit, not to mention the centigrade; they then drenched me in sweat for daring to hang around looking gormless. We were, of course, dressed for a summer's day in Belfast, black T-shirts, black jeans, black zip-up jackets and filthy attitudes. We looked more like we were waiting for a Stranglers reunion gig than a cab to the holiday capital of the world.
Davie took a final drag of his cigarette and said: 'Sorry.'
'What for?'
'Getting pissed. It's the smoking. I can't handle nine hours without a cigarette. I've got so many nicotine patches on I look like Pongo.'
'Pongo?'
'Hundred and One Dalmations. I'll be fine after a sleep.'
'Never worry,' I said. 'C'mon. Let's find a taxi.'
Davie dozed off, his head bumping gently against the window, as we were driven towards Orlando. I watched him in the fading light. We were the same age, but there was something still quite boyish about him. We had prized him in our youth for his ability to get served in off-licences while under age, but it was the only time he had actually looked older than any of us; in fact it wasn't older, it was taller. The rest of us had gotten tall as well, but we'd also aged, some of us quite dramatically. But Davie remained just Big Davie. Big Davie with the cavalier attitude to life and, as I was beginning to fear, a cavalier attitude towards the truth.
What he had said on the plane had kick-started a process of sobriety in me, sucked the benefits of drink from my soul and left the nag of a hangover in my head, which wasn't helped by the rap from the radio the cab driver insisted on blasting out. Davie started to snore.
Maybe I was just being supersensitive. Maybe I was jealous that he'd had his way with Karen Malloy. Maybe he was just pissed and mixed up. Perhaps it was as innocent as that. He was supposed to be on honeymoon with the love of his life, but she'd left him within sight of the altar — that was bound to fuck up your head. Add huge amounts of alcohol, deprive of nicotine, ascend to thirty-six thousand feet, then wait for hallucination to kick in. He had confused fantasy and reality, and come out with Karen Malloy.
Perhaps he didn't know she was dead.
Perhaps when he sobered up I'd tell him that she'd been virtually cut in two by an articulated lorry outside the newspaper office where I was then working. That she'd been on her way to a job interview, that where we might have ended up working together, I had instead ended up going to her funeral. I might have flirted innocently with her, become her confidant. We might have exploded the Harry and Sally myth that men couldn't be friends with women without sex rearing its ugly head. Or we might have gone at it like rabbits, Patricia be damned. Even in the fleeting glimpse I had of her as she crossed the road to our office that day I had registered that she was more beautiful as an adult than she had been as a girl. The old woman in the park had been wrong. There was nothing small village about this girl. She looked magnificent. She had gone blonde; she was wearing a fine business suit which also managed to show off her figure; she had breasts that could poke your eyes out; and then she passed out of my field of vision, and half a minute later she was dead. The next time I saw her she was in her coffin, her cheeks puffed up with cotton wool and somewhere beneath her funeral shroud her legs were stitched back onto her torso. I watched the wooden box shudder along a moving track and then come to a halt while we sang
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