Читать книгу Jesus and Billy Are Off to Barcelona - Deirdre Purcell - Страница 5

CHAPTER TWO

Billy Prepares to Meet Jesus

The jury was still out on Billy O’Connor’s family. Billy sometimes thought they were not too bad. Like on certain Sundays when his Uncle Dick was too sick to come downstairs. His mother, who always saw this as a blessing, would behave like a real mother. Like the mothers you see on the telly. Jolly. The kind of mother who cracks jokes about the burnt corned beef and is so relaxed about it that everyone is allowed to laugh.

Sometimes, on the other hand, Billy thought he was going to die of shame because he was forced to live on the same planet as these people. Not to speak of in the same house on the same street.

At the moment, he was in between.

On the good side, it was very good of his parents to go to all the trouble and expense of arranging this student exchange with the bloke from Barcelona. Billy’s scholarship covered only half the cost, so to pay for the rest of it, his Da had done lots of overtime. He had also borrowed from the Credit Union. His Ma had taken on extra work down at ValuKleen.

On the bad side, they never let Billy forget their goodness. Billy only had to do one thing. One small tiny thing (like forgetting to put out the milk bottles on one single night) and they were all off. He was an ungrateful little pup who had no idea what the real world was like. He didn’t have to wear the same pair of laddered tights for a month. He didn’t have to suck up to that shagger Moreno down at the plant in order to scrounge a few bloody hours of extra work on a Saturday night.

When they first told him about the trip, about three months ago, he had been excited. But then, the next day, when he thought about it, he became a bit afraid too.

It was all very well watching Barcelona on Sky and slagging off Rivaldo and Figo. Or laughing about the poxy Spanish food they must eat in Spain. But then you remembered that soon you’d have to eat the same poxy food. Billy hadn’t had the courage to ask anyone to tell him stuff about Barcelona. Billy was in the habit of pretending to know things.

What was most on his mind was that he might make a fool of himself with the Spanish women.

Billy was worrying about women right now, as a matter of fact. Lying on his bed on top of his Liverpool F.C. sleeping-bag, he was worrying not only about Spanish women but about all women. If worrying about women was an Olympic sport, Billy O’Connor would have walked it.

He looked at his watch. Only three hours before they were due to go to the airport to meet his exchange partner who had this weird name.

Jesus.

Imagine calling your son Jesus, Billy thought. It certainly wouldn’t work here. A Finglas Jesus wouldn’t dare to show his face outside the door.

In another part of the house, he could hear Granny Teresa crackling at something someone said on a re-run of The Golden Girls. Listening to her, Billy smiled. Granny Teresa was alright, actually. She was the only one in the house who liked Kung Fu films. And although it wasn’t really cool to admit that you loved your grandmother, in his secret heart, Billy glowed when he was around her.

He envied her in a sort of a way too because she was seventy and, therefore, everyone had to respect her. She didn’t have to give a sugar about his Ma’s moods or her PMT. And any time his Da got stroppy she’d shut him up with a look and ask him who did he think he was. That she used to change his nappy.

His Uncle Dick – now there was another kettle of kippers. Dick was the Black Sheep of the entire family on both sides. He was separated. He’d had to go back to live with Granny Teresa only four years after he was married. Then the two of them came to live with Billy’s family when Uncle Dick drank them both out of house and home and they had nowhere else to go.

The problem with having Dick in the house was that no one could sleep with him because he snored like an elephant. So he had to have a bedroom all to himself. But there were only three bedrooms in the house proper. So Dick got one. There was one for his parents and one left for Doreen. So Billy had to sleep on a sofa bed in what his Da liked to call The Conservatory.

For the next three weeks, Jesus was going to be in Dick’s room and Dick was going to be sleeping with Granny Teresa in the granny flat. The rules from the agency said that Jesus had to have a room of his own.

The Conservatory was a lean-to glasshouse. Billy’s Da had bought it cheaply from someone in Rush who was getting out of market gardening. His Da ‘borrowed’ a milk float from Premier Dairies and one Saturday morning, he, a mate of his, and Billy had gone to collect it. They had to hurry and get the float back to the plant before that shagger Moreno missed it.

Billy didn’t mind because, as a bedroom, it wasn’t too bad actually. Once he got used to the brightness, birds in the morning, that sort of thing, Billy got to quite like it.

He checked his watch again. Two hours and fifty minutes to go. He settled down with a dog-eared copy of Playboy magazine. His friend, Anthony, had got it from a bloke he worked with on the building site. Now that Billy was sixteen years old, his Ma and Da didn’t bother taking stuff like Playboy away from him any more. He hoped this Jesus was as into women as he was.