Purnell's Fields.

I was lying on my back, on soft grass that held all the warmth of a summer’s day. I must have been dozing as the twittering of birdsong mixed with a faint buzzing in the air was coming from a long way off. You know that sense of seeing behind your eyelids, like pink with diluted blood? That was how I felt for a moment until my pleasant drowsiness was rudely interrupted. ‘Hey Robbo, time to wake up, visiting time from the fambly,’ a boot nudged me in the ribs, causing an instinctive vomiting reflex, the thin trickle of bile leaking from my open mouth.
‘Fuck you shithead.’ I wasn’t up to being polite as reality sunk into another depressing day. Sid just laughed. It was obvious he was already fortified for the day ahead.
‘Where’sthebottle…’it came out garbled as my flailing hands sort what my eyes couldn’t see, they were still in dreamland.
‘Yer,’ he shoved it towards me, the liquid sloshing around like my acid stomach. The first swallow made me vomit again, but I kept down the second and third.
‘’Ain’t we got anythin’ stronger than this muck?’ the wine was thin and did nothing to stop the shakes.
‘Beggars can’t be choose…’
‘Shut up Sid.’
Rolling onto my side I managed to open my gummed-up eyes and looked around for the cheap whiskey I’d had last night. Wine’s okay for waking, but I needed something stronger just to sit up.
‘You better not have nicked it,’ I said, knowing that he wouldn’t be around if he had.
“Cider Sid”, we called him. Nobody could drink that rotgut like Sid, he nursed it like a babe on the teat.
I found my half litre of Scotch rolled up in my sport’s bag. Now that was a laugh, it had been one for a while though…a long time ago.
After the wine it went down a treat, though it burned my stomach. Calculating the exact amount to control the bends wasn’t easy in the morning, but I couldn’t afford to sick that up.
Like Sid had said, it was visiting day.

Once breakfast was over I rummaged around in our lean-to in search of a half-clean shirt. Shirley was good for that. She might ‘ave been a tart but she could come up trumps for special occasions and a visit was one of them. See, I had a brother. I’d had more than that once, but I’m not counting grudges anymore. I have my own reasons for seeing the sodding ‘git and if anyone wants to ‘ave an argument about it then I still got me fists, ain’t I?’
He was older than me our Lionel. Bleeding “poof” that he was, though I ‘ain’t never held that against a guy. S’long as you get it up front, if you know what I mean? Lionel though, he ‘ain’t got the guts that God gave him. Me, I’m a drunk an’ a tosser, right enough. I don’t play games, what you see y’get. That’s me.
Our Lionel never got the rub. He thought that playing with Pussy now and again gave him cred, it just made him pathetic.
But there was something that held me, him and a few others together, like peas in a pod. It hurt remembering, so I tossed back more of the cheap scotch. Memories are not for the likes of me, they burn holes in the brain ‘an bring on more grief than a body can stand.
I don’t want to remember her name. I don’t even want to remember that once…?
Strike that from the records. Lionel wants to slum it. Score a few tabs with some blow, pat me on the head, ‘cos he knows where he can get the soft stuff, and visits for a while.

I want to ask him. Maybe I should have ‘ad more, but I’d woken with memories ‘an that made me a bit “Bolshie”. The soft green fields went back in my mind., to those days when we were just kids. My mind searches for the word and comes up with “Hippy”. Jesus, Joseph and Hail Mary, we were innocents, just kids out for a bit of playing’, but the result was more than any of us could take. “Katie, Katie”, my mind is replaying a torn record. I reach for the bottle and sluice it away. He’ll be here in a while’ an maybe this time he’ll bring her, but I don’t count on nothin’ anymore. This time she might just have gone an’ done it, like she’s bin threatening for years an’ who could blame her? God knows it put me ‘yer on me back wiv’ a bottle to wake me an’ another to get me through the day.
Rob the pisshead. Robbo the coward who couldn’t even stop the shit that day, or ever try to get even for it. Never mind the broken ribs, the kicks in the head, our Lionel screeching ‘cos he got it up the butt wivout asking for a by-your-leave.

‘Hey Rob, get yer head under the tap, I got your shirt ready.’ Shirley’s a better friend than Sid, though sometimes I wish for a bit of peace an’ quiet. Sid knows there’ll be treats tonight, but our Shirley jus’ wants to see that I’m allright for another few weeks.
I’m retchin’ again. Shit that whiskey must hav’ bin a rough un. I try and crawl under the standpipe, but my legs an arms are quivering like a bloody jelly.
‘’Gis a hand Sid.’ Shirley is trying to drag me under the water, but I ‘ain’t going nowhere without a pick-me-up. That’s jus’ the way things are. Twenty-odd years of puttin’ it back an now I can’t do a damn thing without it. Someone pushes the bottle my way an I take another long swig. This time I keep it down enough to get cleaned up and into the denim shirt that don’t smell too bad. Can’t do nothin’ about the jeans, still, they went under the water with me. They’ll dry out a bit while I lie in the sun and wait for my visit.

I was dreamin’ again. This time the smell of the new-cut grass was stronger than the smell of whiskey. I was half in the past and half in the present. I felt the warmth in my crotch and knew that I’d pissed myself again. Lionel was standing over me and Katie was cryin’ as if her heart would break. It was like before, those years long gone by when Purnell’s fields were still a wasteland waitin’ to be reclaimed back from the wild. The bits and pieces of our picnic was strewn all around us and from somewhere I could hear the whoopin’ of the Prossie boys as they celebrated their triumph over the St Anslem kids.
‘Do something Rob, for God’s sake do something,’ Lionel was down on his knees now with his shorts around his ankles, the shit and blood smeared across his ass.
Katie was bubbling up with tears, the snot dripping down her face as she tried to pull her torn dress around her bare budding tits and her dripping fanny.
But it was Maggie I was looking for. Our Maggie who’d always been around, our next-door neighbour’s kid an the girl I was going to marry.

She wasn’t far away. Lying on a bed of new-mown grass, she looked like she was sleepin’.
I knew from the strange tilt of her head that she’d gone though. I settled in beside her, sort of cuddling in as we’d always done as kids. Me and Lionel. Katie and Maggie. Having a picnic before the land was turned into fields, like half of bleedin’ Ireland was in those days. At least she hadn’t been raped…she’d fought too hard and I was sleeping…just like now.

‘How’s things Rob?’, he was standing above me keeping the sun from my eyes.
‘Same as ever.’ What else could I say?
‘You’ve been gone a while this time.’ Said without any rancour. Almost without any interest.
‘Well you know what it’s like. We get moved on a bit, keeps the council looking good.’
‘You have to go and rub it in.’
‘I wasn’t even thinking of you,’ I said. But I was.
‘Katie’s here.’
I propped my body up and tried to look sober.
‘She’s any better?’
‘Not that you’d notice. Still like a fucking zombie. Doesn’t matter what you do.’
‘Of course you tried?’
‘More than you did.’
‘Fuck sake Lionel, Maggie was murdered.’
‘You could have helped us all. We relied on you.’ His voice was breaking and near to tears. Once again he was laying the guilt trip on me. I felt around for the bottle but it wasn’t there.
‘Looking for this?’ He held up a full bottle of single malt. My mouth watered in anticipation.
‘Quid pro quo.’ Lawyer stuff, though I knew what it meant.
My jeans were dry now, I’d been dreaming of wetting myself. The baggie was in my back pocket. I drew it out and dangled it a moment.
‘It won’t make any difference. The last of the common land is being auctioned off this week.’
‘So Purnell Fields, they go down in oblivion, despite what happened?’
‘Grow up bro. It was a prank that went too far.’
I wanted to scream about the waste of life, Maggie dead, Katie in therapy and me in purgatory. That’s what Father Ryan would have said, God rot his soul.

I felt the cool hand on my brow for a moment.
‘Rob, are you coming home now?’ she looked a bit brighter than normal.
‘How are things at home, our Katie?’ I asked.
‘Well, you know. People come and go. Dad’s not been well. Mother isn’t often there.’
No, I thought. Mother died right after the scandal. Couldn’t hold her head up in church. Dad had never been the same afterwards. One boy a pansy, another a coward. One girl murdered, another afraid of any man.
‘You look good, Katie,’ I said and she did. Her eyes were brighter and she looked at me, not through me. Then she ruined it.
‘You got my medicine, our boy?’
Yes, I had her medicine as well as Lionel’s. Some coke and more hash. It kept the blues away…or so they said.
I don’t do badly out of it. I make about 50% on the deal, enough to keep me in the game, but also to drink myself senseless.

There was never any real inquest after that day. The police were as embarrassed as the church. A prank that had got out of hand, was the official version. Maggie had fell awkwardly trying to help Katie. Our Katie wouldn’t be examined by a doctor. ‘No,’ she emphasised, ‘I’m a virgin, so I am.’ And Lionel? Of course he hadn’t brought it on us. Nobody knew he was as bent as a nine-bob note.
The boys got a caution, that I did find out. Father Ryan preached forgiveness, but I remember Maggie’s head lying at that awkward angle and her saying the week before that day, ‘not long to wait now, just the banns to read,’ and I touched her breast then for the first and last time. ‘Aye Maggie, I’ll wait,’ and I’m still waiting.

‘Gi’us a drop.’ Sid says. I knew he would, he does it every time. Rotgut cider every day, but ready to share the good stuff with me while it’s going. I think about the visit and wonder how long it will go on for. Not long now, especially since dad is near to where he catches up with me and that’s not going to take more than a few months. I swill the malt around my mouth and luxuriate in the taste. God knows I’d few pleasures after Maggie died.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll wake up again with the smell and the sounds of Purnell Fields before it all went bad. That might be the time to think again of Maggie and perhaps this time I won’t need the bottle any longer.

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