Con & Clive - feedback appreciated

LouthMouth

Short story, feedback appreciated. First one I've ever written. Obviously.

"CON & CLIVE"

Con Kearney's life was the pitter patter of tiny feats. He really had no luck. Like, one Saturday in 1997 he was sitting watching the Brookside Omnibus, some Ebola virus struck the Close just as a scalding hot Chow Mein Pot Noodle struck Con in the groin. Straight to the Louth Hospital...third degree burns, like the nickname of that swot Arthur Burns down the road with the PhD and Masters and all sortsa craic like that. Sitting in A&E when he should have been doing his Lotto numbers....1 for the one-nil win over England in '88, 15 for the amount of bottles of Woodies he skulled the night he ended up with Geraldine Reilly below in the Oasis, 17 for when he left school, 21 for the year he left home, 23 for the number of his parent's bungalow, and 31 for the 31st October when his dog Schillachi was killed...feckin' fireworks. Of course the winning numbers according to Ronan Collins and that smiley fecker from Stokes Kennedy Crowley were 1,15, 17,21, 23, 31, Some aul 80 year old hoor from Gweedore scooped the 3.2 million jackpot that week, no other winners...only losers like Con. Ever since then it had been downhill. His life.

Unemployed since returning from Australia six months previously, his withering frame wallowed in a sunken sofa of self-pity. In the previous six months he'd lost his sales career, best friends and the will to live. The Irish news sung to him on his overworked tv as he smoked his seventh Major cigarette of the morning. He'd given up smoking more times than he cared to remember and had possibly read Allen Carr's "Easy Way to Stop Smoking" more often than the author's proof-readers. But the little pre-rolled tubes of tobacco had won, he'd given up the battle. "A dead language" he thought as the news as Gaeilge ended, having spent thirteen years learning it and a further eighteen forgetting it. This residual bitterness belied a formerly open mind and dust-ridden bookshelf of classics in his dead parents' living room. "David Copperfield" was his favourite although he never dared reveal his literary secret to the lads, to whom David Copperfield meant a bland American magician once married to Claudia Schiffer. He'd moved back here to this bungalow from his apartment three months earlier after his life has unravelled abruptly, like a broken audio cassette.

Once a man with meerkat-like attentiveness he barely acknowledged the doorbell ring for the third time, each shrill deeper and more urgent than on the first two occasions. He didn't want to answer its call: like married life, the army and any form of physical exercise he knew it probably wasn't for him. Annoyed, his gloved hands struggled on his chair, each second deepening his frustration at this intruder to his learned solitude. In a time that may have just broken the 400m Olympic record he finally reached the wooden barrier to the outside world. He pondered before opening it, he'd already confused the buzz of his own doorbell and that of Pat Butcher's on "Eastenders" three times already this week. He finally relented and the external light hit him as if he'd just left the cinema after a particularly epic blockbuster on a summer afternoon.

"Chilli!" exclaimed Clive Thomas to an incredulous Con, Chilli being a nickname he'd picked up from some particularly gastronomically attuned school-mates. Con proffered his right worn Mikaso Gaelic football glove, yellow with dozens of black spots - like a rural Irish road - a flashback to a promising underage football career. He immediately realised his mistake. "Easy mistake to make, mate" beamed Clive, "last time you saw me my right arm was intact!"

Con was shocked. Like an honest psychotherapist, Clive had brought back a raft of bad memories. Some of these were hazy, perhaps a bamboo raft of bad memories. He wanted to know why he was here. So he asked accusatory "Why are you here Clive?".
"Don't be like that, mate. Just callin' to see how you was" replied Clive. He hadn't changed much thought Con; same inane grin, red hair, teeth like the Giant's Causeway and a huge red face. Indeed his face resembled one giant freckle with various interruptions. He was less Brad Pitt, more Silage Pit. At six foot five and weighing in at 18 stone he was tall and stout and also like Guinness, recognisably Irish.
"You're looking well" lied Con to Clive.
"You too, bud", touchéed Clive. Their conversation was awkward, like a courting teenage couple who'd suddenly sobered up.
"So, how've ye been since we got back?" shot Clive to puncture the aural inertia.
"What do you think?" the voice in Con's head said, which Clive obviously sensed.
"Yeah, well it's not been a bed of roses myself, mate. I mean look at me! One bloody arm! No more pulling pints...can't drive. Had to give up the snooker aswell!" smiled Clive desperately trying to extract an ash of warmth from his former friend.

"I don't know how you can just turn up here out of the blue and expect everything to be hunky-dory. We're not lads on the lash in Sydney any more. 24 hour bars, 48 hour sessions, not a care in the world. That's all changed. The two lads aren't around and I can't get a job, it's a load of crap. I wish we'd never gone, I really do" Con said suddenly, tears welling in his eyes like a doll on the Late Late Toy Show. "I'm tired of being pushed around. I'm sick of sitting on me arse every day. The only women I approach these days have concern written across their faces, and any women I approach have Concern written across here" Con pointed to his chest, glad he'd got that outburst off the same part of his torso.

"Con, I'm here to say sorry. I thought I'd be too proud, but look at you, mate. I'm sorry." Con couldn't believe it. It was the last thing he thought he'd ever hear, apart from maybe a decent Westlife song. The voice in his head was still there begging him to refuse this seemingly token apology. Con recalled that balmy New South Wales night.

Himself, Clive, Paul and Tony on the beer in Coogee, in a backpackers bar with more GAA jerseys per square foot than the Hogan Stand. "Why did you come to Australia?" he was often asked by locals he worked with and he always jokingly replied "I just got a sudden urge to meet some new Irish people!". But it was half-true. He'd felt at home there. Until that night. Clive thought it would be a great idea to drive into King's Cross with more beer inside him than the Guinness Brewery in St. James Gate that his father gave his life to. His dad worked as a storeman in the brewery for 35 years and all he got was a bad back, two free bottles of stout a week and a cheap gold clock on the way out that stopped three months after he retired, slightly outlasting its owner's heart. It was his father's passing that had prompted Clive to go travelling in the first place. And, of course, the seven thousand euro left to him in his will. Sure wouldn't he get more drink for it in Australia, his father would be proud of him. They'd entered the bar three hours previously, the humidity the first thing to hit them. Breathing wasn't easy and Tunes were of no use here. After three bakers' dozens of Carlton Draught bottles between them Con stupidly agreed to Clive's planned jaunt while Paul and Tony, like Solitaire novices, followed suit. They sunk their bottles in unison and left the bar with a spring in their steps, albeit it one from a busted mattress. They waded through a squad of Dublin, Meath and Galway jerseys and reached the door. Con lit a fag while Paul got sick, Tony giving him the obligatory pat on the back whilst Clive revved the engine of the jalopy they'd picked up the East Coast for 500 dollars, the same price as the previous seven owners had paid. After Paul had watered an unsuspecting potted plant cum ashtray with his previous four hours' alcohol consumption they headed city-bound. The car passed by George Street, with had more neon streets than after a Provo punishment beating spree in Belfast. The vehicle spluttered along, its engine resembling the cough of a forty a day smoker. Con's head was dizzy, he became aware of the intensity of the fact that he was abroad, in one of the world's greatest cities, drunk and having the craic with his three best mates. Life couldn't get better than this. He watched a catwalk of beautiful Sydneyian ladies queue outside a bar called Arthouse. He felt a twinge of regret that he was on his way to another backpacker's pub, where the only Antipodeans would be the burly Maori-looking bouncers on the door. "Put that ****e off!" shouted Paul from the back, the strains of some political debate on the radio awakening him from his alcoholic stupor. Clive, with one hand lighting a Peter Jackson cigarette, obliged and reached for a cassette that they'd almost worn out, like an impulse buy in the January sales. It was the last time Con would see Clive with two arms. The last time he'd see Paul and Tony apart from in cramped Irish living rooms surrounded by their respective uncles and aunts, plates of sandwiches and disbelieving parents. Paul and Tony died instantly. Clive took his eyes off the road for two seconds and ploughed head-on into a saloon cocooning a family from Brisbane. Not wearing seatbelts the two lads were catapulted through the front windscreen, 63 years of memories splattered across a Citroen dashboard. Two sets of first steps, first days at school, Holy Communions and Confirmations, 585 points between them in the Leaving, four sisters and one brother, predilections for Italian food, Playstation games and woeful Hollywood comedies, plans to travel home by South America on the way home the lot. Everything that converged to make them who they were. Paul and Tony. Tony and Paul. Wasted.

"Wasted. That's what you were" said Con. "But you let me drive. It wasn't my fault, mate", replied Clive pleadingly. "How can I answer Tony's parents when they ask me what his last words were?!?!?! I can't tell them they were "Gimme a smoke, Chilli, ye hoor ye". How can I tell them that? I'm sick of lying, just sick of it all".
"Me too, mate...but we have to stick together, we're all that's left".
"Let me think about it Clive, it's been a bit much seeing you out of the blue, ye know?".
"I understand. Listen, I'll head on, I'll give ye a call, yeah?".
"Some chance" returned the voice in Con's head. "Some chance".

"I'll see myself to the door, mate. Take care, yeah?". Clive's left hand struggled but finally shut the door behind him and perhaps behind what had happened six months before and maybe even their life-long friendship.

The voice in Clive's head revealed itself. "The cheek of him to show up. Bloody hell" said Con's brother indignantly as he pushed Con's wheelchair back into the sitting-room.

maninamousesuit

ok i like it but i had one thought. It would sound good spoken, not written. Get a DVD of Beckett...Maybe first love or Krapps last tape. This thing would be great as a monologue, read at breathless speed...Anyway thats what i was thinking. Keep it up