Page 35 of Calling Frank O'Hare

‘Well, I’m away then. Definitely going. Look after yourself, Francis. You’re doing the right thing.’

Frank waved goodbye with a heavy heart and a great lump in his throat. Da was staying another night at Eamon’s before going home first thing. They wouldn’t see each other again until Christmas. He was on his own now and he wasn’t sure what to do with this new freedom he’d been so looking forward to. He’d been liberated from the tyranny of parental control and he could do whatever he wanted. He should feel happy, but all he felt was lost and alone. He remembered the three things Da had told him to do. Stay out of trouble, keep a low profile, and phone Ma every week. In the absence of anything else, those were the rules he would live by while he was over here.

With nothing else to do, he trekked back to the halls of residence to unpack his things. He passed a couple of games of football on the grassy areas in the student village. Some people had sorted themselves into groups and were drinking and hanging out. Frank walked on and found his building, then his room.

Ma had sent him with a box of groceries and they’d bought some fresh food that morning, so he took them into the kitchen and looked for some space in the fridge. Someone came in as he was putting his milk in there. ‘You need to put your name on it, mate.’

‘Huh?’ Frank turned to see a tall, bulky, fair-haired guy wearing an Undertones T-Shirt.

‘Your name. If you don’t put your name on it, someone’ll have it. Although it’s no guarantee it won’t be nicked if you do name it.’

‘Oh right. I’ll get a pen.’

‘You can use mine when I’m finished. Found out the hard way, didn’t I? Two yoghurts gone, just like that. Where you from?’

‘Ireland.’ Frank was thinking about rule number two, keep a low profile. He couldn’t hide his accent but he didn’t need to be handing out specifics.

‘Anywhere near Derry? Or is it Londonderry? I’m never sure which.’

‘Depends which side you’re on. The Undertones call it Derry. I’m from Belfast. It’s about seventy miles from Derry.’ There he’d said it, but he was banking on this fella being like the punks back home. He pointed at the guy’s T-Shirt. ‘I’ve seen them in Belfast though.’

The guy whistled. ‘Jammy bastard. Were they good?’

‘Aye. The best I’ve seen.’

‘I’m Adrian. Adrian Wilson.’

‘Frank O’Hare.’

Adrian tossed him the pen. ‘Here you go, mate.’

Frank emptied his groceries out onto the table and began to write his name on each item. Adrian was taking his groceries out of a cupboard to do the same. There was a sound of footsteps clop, clopping along the corridor. Whoever it was, seemed to be coming towards them.

‘Have you seen a girl wearing a top hat and tails?’

Frank looked up, the pen still in his hand. Standing on the other side of the kitchen was the most incredible looking girl he’d ever seen in his entire life. She had long red hair that hung in waves around her and a face that could have been painted by Rossetti. She was tall. No, she was statuesque. And she had the kind of cut-glass accent Frank had only heard on TV. Usually someone from the English upper class talking about the Irish problem.

‘Er, no,’ he said.

‘You’re sure?’

‘I think we’d have noticed,’ said Adrian.

She frowned at them. ‘Yes, I expect so. Damn.’ Then she turned away and clop, clopped back down the hall.

Adrian raised his eyebrows at Frank. ‘Well that was surreal. Fancy a pint?’

23

The Lady of Shalott – 1981

For the first time in his life, Frank had friends who weren’t Irish. He even had friends who weren’t British. That was how different his life had become. He’d thought it would be easy to stick to the three golden rules – stay out of trouble, keep a low profile and phone Ma every week – but he’d reckoned without Adrian’s influence. By November he was already missing phone calls home, much to Ma’s displeasure. By Christmas, no one in their right mind would call his profile low. Frank had become a regular on the party scene. In fact he was a regular on every scene that involved music and drinking. Everyone knew him and nobody cared where he came from, what church he went to, or even if he went to church at all. It was a revelation to Frank, an epiphany that hit him like a lightning bolt. He was really and properly free. All of a sudden, he was unstoppable in the pursuit of unmitigated hedonism.

It was March now, and the only one of his rules he hadn’t yet broken was the first one, although Adrian believed it was only a matter of time before trouble came looking, the way Frank was carrying on with girls. It wasn’t Frank’s fault really. It was just that these girls were mad for the accent. They couldn’t get enough of it. He’d held out at first, hoping Eve would turn up. Every time he called home, he asked Martin if he’d seen her but the answer was always no. Billy might have seen her. He had his ear to the ground on these things, but he couldn’t ask Billy because he didn’t have a phone in his house, and Billy never wrote. So he gave up on Eve, and then came his second epiphany. Sex was fucking ace! And in this country, birth control was easy. Girls were on the pill, and if they weren’t, a boy could buy johnnies without being subjected to the Spanish Inquisition. Frank could not believe his luck. As Adrian had a habit of reminding him, he went from virgin to a complete slag of the male variety, in the space of a few short months. So what? Frank was having too much fun to care.

This weekend he was giving Billy, Martin and Cousin Finn a taste of his new life. It was their first ever trip across the water and they were struggling to take in the everyday things that Frank had gotten used to.

‘It’s kinda weird without the soldiers and the checkpoints. It feels like something’s missing. Like it shouldn’t feel strange, but it does,’ said Martin.

---