Larkin's Barkin'

Chapter 5

Chas walked how you would imagine, blind as a bat, slewing his club foot, and favouring a smarting bottom. Roisin guided him to the school entrance hall, told the secretary in no uncertain terms, to sign them out as sick, watched it done, threatened the bully guardian of the official school portal that O"Neill hell would visit her if she rumbled any of this, after which she steered Chas down the concrete steps to the street. He was free. He was safe. And Chas felt a rare exuberance, for the time being anyway, for he knew there would be consequences, there always were.

He looked to Roisin, her face a blur but he knew what she looked like, he even dreamed of her. Although only a year or so older, she was so much taller than his crippled body. He always wished he could iron it straight, but this would expose him even more. Roisin had the rangy, lanky frame of a lass nudging her mature years, a radiant womanhood already evident. A passionate looking freckled face that flared to reinforce the shock of unruly red hair and, the thing Chas most loved, her emerald eyes. They were so soft and loving when directed at him. He could not understand why this girl had become his protector. He was too scared to ask lest it be unlucky, and she disappeared. She told him the faeries had sent her and, it was all Chas needed to complete a daydream and send him off on another one, one that embraced his growing love of the Irish.

Roisin stood looking up and down the road, as if considering which way to go, or maybe looking to see if the police were tailing them. Chas wanted to put distance between him and the school. All he could picture in his mind"s eye was the Headmistress and School secretary charging down the steps to pull him back and beat him again, the police swooping to feel his collar, a charge of attempted murder. After a brief time that seemed like forever to Chas, Roisin made up her mind and, with Chas’s hand in tow, she lugged him along the pavement. Although his ambulation was awkward, he felt wondrously safe; nobody laughed at him. Nobody dared.

Roisin noticed Chas’s difficultly in walking, stopped and looked at him as though absorbing all of his hurt, a beautiful caring face. He couldn"t see it clearly, but knew it to be narrow with high, defined cheekbones tipped with freckles, not soft, but warm. ‘What’s up Chas, is yer arse sore, so?’

Oh, what a lovely accent she had. ‘Yes,’ Chas replied.

‘So, you’re struggling to walk?’ He felt her eyes bore to the core of his soul. ‘There’s a chemist down the road, we’ll call in there,’ and she started off again, tugging Chas who walked in an almost indecent manner, legs spasmodically stretching out, then brought into tiny steps, returning to an extended gait. Roisin’s heart went out to this poor emaciated and crippled boy. She would protect him forever. She’d had an older brother who had been similarly malformed, and the family talked of how he had been tormented mercilessly by children, and even adults, until he could take no more. It was spoken of only in hushed tones in her family, suicide being a mortal sin in the Catholic Church. Her brother had been refused a Christian burial, and she still did not know where he had been interred. The family kept it a secret. She hated the Catholic Church for this and hated with a vehemence all priests. She knew what they were doing, and one had tried it on with her, just the once. She told the priest what she thought about that, just before she kneed him in his child molesting bollocks and smashed his head against the altar.

They reached the pharmacy, and without hesitation Roisin tugged Chas through the door. This girl knew what she was doing, and he followed, breaking his hand contact for a brief moment to turn around once as he entered. He needed to maintain this lucky streak. She looked back at him in a confused manner, took his hand again and traversed the aisles, stopped, looked, selected something, moved on, picked up something else. Chas followed her to the counter, he heard the till chime the sale and, thinking he would head to the daylight and return to the street, he was surprised to be drawn to the back of the shop. He was convinced he had trodden on some cracks in the plastic tiles, and this worried him, but trusted in his spin at the door to carry the good luck on. It did, Roisin knew what she was doing and in her he trusted.

They reached a back aisle that was darkened. She had removed the bulb from the low ceiling light and, taking a stool to one side, she pulled Chas to her, cuddled him and, gently turning him around, she lowered his shorts and then with tender hand strokes she rubbed a soothing balm into his red raw arse cheeks. He smelled lavender. It reminded him of his Nan’s house, the floor polish she used. Nan, on his mother"s side, had always been kind to Chas, and when she died a couple of years back, Chas lost his only familial ally. Oddly, Chas was not embarrassed, and he could not explain this. He liked the sensation of having his bum rubbed and it appeared to him this was going on longer than was absolutely necessary, not that he was complaining. He felt an unfamiliar tingling response.

‘That should do the trick Chas. Are you enjoying this, so?’

In a croaking voice, Chas managed to say he loved the intimate feeling and was annoyed when the Chemist told them to bugger off. She pulled up Chas’s PE shorts as he stood, and then, right in the face of the shopkeeper, she said something unintelligible to Chas and clearly to the shopkeeper as well. He thought it was the Irish. Regardless, it had the desired effect as the Chemist retreated, likely to the toilet to rub his own bum.

Roisin said she would take him home, but Chas stood his ground. She looked back and ruffling his hair she reassured him all will be okay. He wished he could believe her. However, he went along and as he hit the pavement and fresh air, he began his spasmodic and clumsy gait.

‘What is it, Chas?’

Chas looked like she might be beautiful but dim-witted. ‘If you tread on the cracks you will have bad luck.’ It seemed obvious to him.

‘Did you tread on any cracks this morning on your way into school?’

Chas thought, ‘Only the one when I was beaten up by Mickey Saint the first time.’

‘So, avoiding the cracks up until you met that feckin’ arse Saint didn’t help you much?’

Chas thought on, did cracks go over to the following day as he had trod on a c***k as his mum had dragged him from the off-licence, home.

‘Chas, superstition is not worth the stress, and I should know being Irish, but what the hell,’ and she took Chas’s hand and skipped the paving flags avoiding the cracks with Chas, laughing and joking, tumbling occasionally and gathering a great deal of future misfortune as she scooped him up and lifted him over a c***k, treading on it herself, for his defence she said. They reached his house just as a shifty looking man trotted down the steps, sporting a satisfied grin that disappeared as Roisin tripped him. He went flying across the cracked pavement. Every flag was broken and Roisin, after telling the dirty old punter to feck off, looked at the pavement, seeking an explanation from Chas.

‘Mickey Saint. He heard of my superstition and broke the entire pavement to make it difficult for me to get in or out of my house,’ Chas answered, speaking from the largely intact cobbles of the road. Chas gestured his sightless head to a plank that lay against the kerb. Roisin lifted the plank and laid it down so Chas could step over the crazy paving onto the stone steps.

‘You dozy bastard.’ It was Chas’s mum, in a tawdry nightie that might be alluring to a s*x-starved blind man, but to Roisin, it was simply seedy. ‘Wot you doin’ ‘ome so soon?’

‘I, er, er...’ Chas teetered, trembling on the narrow plank.

Roisin stepped in for him and walking across the cracked pavement with not a care in the world, she went up to Chas’s mum, ‘Mrs Larkin, I’m Roisin O’Neill.’

Chas’s mum took in this knowledge as if it mattered not a jot, although the myth that was the O’Neill clan was growing in mysterious strength. She ignored the warning bell and Betsy laughed.

‘Chas has had a little trouble at school…’

Roisin was interrupted as Chas’s mum back handed her son across the cheek. ‘What’ve I told yer about being good?’ He fell from the plank.

‘Stop it, and if you know what"s good for you, you’ll not hit Chas again. Am I making myself clear?’ Chas, as he stepped back on his plank, sensed his mum momentarily feel the power of the O’Neills and wisely become scared, but soon regained some of her Larkin composure, telling Roisin to "f**k off".

Roisin turned back, stomped the steps, and got right into the older woman’s face, ‘Say that again,’ the threat and menace patent.

Mrs Larkin told Chas to get indoors, and he went, but before he disappeared to the scullery, to his place, he thought he heard his mum apologise to Roisin. It felt good and then he heard Rosin instruct that if the police come calling to interview Chas about the attempted murder of Mickey Saint Junior, she was to get a message to her, and at that, Roisin turned on her heel, skipped the steps and, treading on every c***k, zigzagged away.