The people down here – no spoilers – are crazy about cars. The modern-day horse I suppose. And they love their number plates: SAM 03 TYR, OIL 444, K3PRL1T.
I prefer buses, and not for the aesthetics, but for the practical way they whoosh you around. And as I left for the bus stop at the end of our lane the other day, I looked forward to a silent, blissful trip into town. Fionnuala was taking the car and I wanted to go to the library.
“You’re getting the bus?” Her eyebrow arched. “The only people who get the bus here are schoolkids and old folk. You’ll get looked at.”
I sallied forth with my man-bag and a disdainful look. “And I’m gonna read my Hemingway on the bus. To give them all a scare.”
She couldn’t have been more wrong. The lovely big warm bus was piloted by a lovely big warm driver and I finished The Snows of Kilimanjaro just as we landed at the depot in town. After my sojourn to the library – I had ordered Then Again by Pat Boran to read his cracking poem Lining Out – and a coffee in a little café I liked, I headed back to the station.
While waiting peacefully, a sports car pulled up and blared the horn. I didn’t recognise the driver with the dark windows and sunglasses (yet no sun), but the number plate caught my eye. DEN71ST.
“Jump in sir. No friend of mine needs a bus.” It was Kieran, my dentist and soccer manager; a Duchenne smile and a jackal’s eyes.
As we sped off, Kieran was talking nine to the dozen. He simply couldn’t comprehend my itinerary that day. “Call me for God’s sake! I’d have sent someone for you.”
“I wanted to get the bus. To slow down, you know. See the countryside from a higher plane.”
He stared at me as we left hedges, trees and houses behind in a blur. Then he boned me about the root canal that I had been prevaricating royally about.
“That upper-left molar isn’t sore now, so it won’t be too sore to work at. Leave it ‘till its sore and...”
The people down here are crazy about cars. The modern-day horse I suppose. And they love their number plates: SAM 03 TYR, OIL 444, K3PRL1T
He dropped me at the door. “See you tonight at the footie Fabien, and about your tooth, as Leonard Cohen said: ‘Listen to the butterfly, whose days but number three. Listen to the butterfly, don’t listen to me...”
Surely Kieran had mis-read Cohen? It didn’t matter. I sighed and phoned the practise to book an appointment. They answered promptly: two days’ time. Kieran had forewarned them about my call.
Later, I glumly drove to the leisure centre, my mind eaten up with fear. Those two words: root canal. I changed into my shorts and Spurs top and failed to shake the image of Kieran drilling through my jaw, blue scrubs and Classic FM on low.
I trained like a demon that night though. It was odd the strength I had and the weakness just millimetres below. I was the fastest, the neatest and the most vocal, urging and barging, and I began to understand why Kieran allowed his personality to change on the pitch. He was opening a gas valve, allowing pressure to escape. He was protecting himself.
By the time we started a game, I had banished all my dread. I scored a couple of tasty goals and was having a good laugh with the lads when I slipped past an opponent and saw Kieran sprinting towards goal, screaming for a cross.
I smacked the ball and it hit him full on the face and he collapsed. Blood everywhere. He had broken his nose. Or I had, it began to dawn on me. Even if it was an accident.
The root canal had to be cancelled, but the receptionist assured me Kieran would be back early next week. And I was top of the list.
As Cohen said, “Hallelujah”.