Listening into conversations has to be the single most entertaining
thing one can do on public transport. Especially arguments. Darragh loved
nothing more than a good argument. Regularly, on his daily commute to and from
work, he would pop in headphones, let the lead dangle idly and happily relax
and listen to the bizarre snippets of commentary going on around him.
Dublin
had no shortage of interesting characters, and the Luas seemed to be a magnet
attraction for theses eccentric people. Over the years he had learnt how to
spot a good chatter. Old women were a terror for it, the skin under their chins
even sagged from its overuse. They just couldn’t help it, they had these
searching eyes and a blatant disregard for the uniform awkward silence that was
publicly expected on transport. ‘It’s a wonder they aren’t hired as private
investigators,’ Darragh had wondered, after a particularly interesting gossip
about someone’s sister-in-law’s brother’s cousin who had ‘taken to the drugs’.
Even better than the old, chin wagging, trolley pushers, were the
fighting couples. There was little else that Darragh found quite so amusing as
a couple, arguing in whispers, ‘yes … Dear, no … Dear’, whilst refraining from flaying
their partner before escaping the slamming doors of the Luas. Today, was a good day, because right in front
of him were two such people. A blonde, not naturally, he guessed as her roots
were in bad need of a touch up. She was whispering at a furious rate with
flecks of spit flying at her partner’s ear periodically. She was thin and
fierce with strong, loony hands, just waiting to throttle something. Someone’s
mother was mentioned.
‘Ohhh …’ Darragh winced, insulting mothers on public transport was a
dangerous game to play. He rearranged his lunchboxes in his little backpack.
Thirty years old and he still had his lunch made for him every day. Amy was
like that, she enjoyed having someone to look after. She was a real comforter. There was a total
sense of home and serenity about her, but she was getting awfully broody
lately, cooing at babies and what not. Darragh couldn’t stand it, ‘she’s like a
chicken’, he thought.
‘If you ever say something like that in front of my mother again I’ll
kill you, d’you hear?’, ‘What? I said nothing!’
‘The bills! She’s not to know we can’t pay the ESB, she’ll start
thinking she’s to fork out for it. Don’t you know she’s probably dementia, Ger,
you could have given her a heart attack!’
It went on and on, about bills and hospitals, and her mother.
‘Does she ever shut up?’, Darragh felt bad for poor Ger, he knew what it
was like to be on the receiving end of those lectures.
Amy was prone to lecturing, sometimes Darragh felt he had to remind her
that she was not, in fact, his mother. This never went down well, Darragh’s
mammy wasn’t overly fond of her. She’d stolen him away from Westmeath and taken
him to the bustling, cosmopolitan Dublin. Of course, who could ever be good
enough for her little pet. There was never an apology from Amy either, oh no,
she just slowly lost the violent rage and carried on as if it never happened.
‘Send Rúan to a public school, are you joking?’ Poor Ger in front of him
was getting an awful doing. ‘What do you think we are? Made of money? It’ll do
him, sure we’re hardly Blackrock material’.
Jets of steam rose up out of her ears and her eyes bulged. The poor girl
was lost for words. ‘I... you – I actually can’t even believe you just said
that’, slowly the arms crossed, legs crossed, her lips closed and she stared
straight on.
‘Oh God help him’ was all Darragh could think. He knew the silent treatment when he saw it.
Watching these two, suddenly, was like a mirror. Was that all there was to it?
Arguing day and night, over money, mothers, kids and bills? He looked at his
lunchboxes and started to shuffle his feet a little. Was this the only upside?
Lunch? It was the routine he liked, the safety of it. He had even planned on
proposing sometime soon, but what would that do? ‘Will you promise to make my
lunch for me for the rest of my life?’ Darragh glanced out the window at the
passing graffiti. ‘Artists indeed’, he snorted. His mother’s ring was in the
jeweller’s right now being resized. They’d been going out over three years now.
Darragh had never really believed in the whole ‘marriage’ thing, but it was what
social convention called for, so he went along with it. He’d never been one to
go against the flow of things.
Darragh remained seated as the doors slid open and shut again, watching
the angry woman click-clack off the platform with her high-heels, and her arms
still firmly folded. Poor Ger seemed a bit more flustered, doing an awkward
half-jog to keep up with her furious pace, wiping his red forehead and
grumbling to himself. Two others walked on, a boy and a girl, about sixteen.
Phones were whipped out and they pointed at pictures in turn. ‘That’s you’,
laughing non-stop, ‘No, that’s you … that’s me and that’s you, you’re the ugly
one’. The shared earphones, their ankles criss-crossed and legs swinging. They were oblivious to the entire carriage,
they didn’t even talk in whispers. Darragh had been far too shy at that age,
had he ever been that giddy in public? Amy wasn’t exactly the wittiest girl,
she was a bit shy herself. The two teenagers had never even looked up at anyone
else in the carriage.
Darragh sat perplexed, jealous of two sixteen year olds and terrified of
the two that had just left. Where had he gone wrong, to completely bypass that
giggly bit of love? He felt like his shirt and tie were constricting his
airway. Was a big shiny red forehead and arguments all he had to hope for? He
was floored, life had just passed him out altogether. He looked at the
outskirts of Dublin flying by and plugged in his earphones. He shuffled through his music. ‘When was the
last time I even went to a concert?’ He looked at his lunchboxes and felt
horribly guilty and uncomfortable. There
was no urgent need to collect the ring, he decided. The shabby back gardens of
council houses rolled by, revealing the urban sprawl of North Dublin.
Everything felt so permanent already. Darragh thought about what his mother had
said, ‘there’s no rush in settling down, love’, and he began to wonder whether
‘settling down’ and ‘settling’ in general were interminably linked.
V. Good
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