Love on the Dark Side of the City Read online

  Love on the Dark Side of the City

  By Thomas Kennedy

  Love on the Dark Side of the City

  Copyright 2010 Thomas Kennedy

  Love on the Dark Side of the City is a book of fiction and none of its characters are intended to portray real people. Names characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Smashwords Edition

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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  Love on the Dark Side of the City

  By Thomas Kennedy

  Chapter One

  Ann could see the tears run down her face in the steam clouded bathroom mirror.

  “Hurry up,” her younger brother said for the third time, rattling the door handle.

  “Hush” she heard her mother instruct in hissed tones, “Leave Ann alone and get down to your breakfast and don’t waken your father or there will be trouble.”

  Ann splashed water in her face and tried to get a grip on herself.

  “Are you all right Ann?” her mother almost whispered through the door.

  “Yes, I’ll be down.” Ann said gathering herself.

  “Hurry or you will be late for your interview.”

  Ann dried her face. Her tears had stopped. She carefully put her bra on over her sore breast.

  “You are a ripe one,” her father had said last night, when he had come home from the night shift at the club and had come to her room. The nipple he had twisted was bruised and sore. She shuddered in embarrassment and self-consciousness. Her mother had heard her muffled cry and had come and taken him away.

  “Come out of there George, come to bed,” she had said and brought him into their bedroom.

  Her breasts were large and the bruise covered a good half. Her face was pretty and kind, with a childish openness, but dominated by vulnerable hurt large blue grey eyes. The eyes met the eyes in the mirror. What should she do? Her mother must know she wasn’t stupid or blind. Yet she couldn’t talk about it, to tell her would have awful consequences. The eyes began to fill with tears again and Ann forced herself to get dressed.

  *******

  Knackers, gipsy, itinerant, she had been called them all. Streetwise at seventeen Megan tightened her shawl around her shoulders in the cold damp morning air and walked slowly along the Kildare street on route to her begging spot on Molesworth street.

  “Will we meet at the MacDonald’s?” her friend and companion Maureen asked.

  “Eleven.” Megan said in agreement.

  “You should have combed your hair, you look a fright,” Maureen chided in her friendly way.

  “Look at yourself in jeans under a shawl. Sure no one will give you a penny you look too good.”

  “I’m going to Mountjoy Jail this afternoon to meet me fiancée and Jim will want me to look good.”

  “Will he ever get out?” Megan asked although she knew the answer.

  “It was the O’Reilly’s. They started the fighting when they had the drink taken. He only stood up for his side.”

  “With a slash hook. He took the scalp off one of them. If the police hadn’t come on their motor bicycles he would have killed someone.”

  “Five years is a lot.”

  “Tell him to stay out of trouble.”

  “See you later,” Maureen said as they reached the point where they parted company. “I’ll be at the cash machine in Dame street or thereabouts if you need me.” Maureen added as she departed. This was her usual begging spot.

  *******

  I know her, Megan thought, as she came down Molesworth street and spotted a woman standing with some brown envelopes into the letter box on the door of the not yet open passport centre offices.

  Sonia cursed as she realised there was no letterbox, none that she cold see. She had an appointment with O’Keefe the solicitor in Molesworth Street and had decided to drop off the passport details while in town. The Passport office would not open until ten o’clock. By which time she would be gone. She would have to come in again.

  “Any little help?” Megan asked with outstretched hand.

  Sonia was startled, “Go get yourself a job,” she reacted, sounding angry, mainly from the fright of being unexpectedly addressed.

  Megan was surprised to hear the woman speak in a strong Russian accent. Anyone who had a television would have heard a similar Russian accent at some time.

  “Just a little help,” Megan repeated.

  “I know you” Sonia said. “You are one of the Itinerants who call at Morehampton road. What do you want here?”

  “Just begging miss, we do house collections on different days.”

  “You should wash your hair and your face and your clothes and have a bath while you are at it. You are a disgrace.”

  “We don’t have baths miss. We live in a caravan.”

  “You should be employed. It is a disgrace. Here...”

  Sonia shoved a few coins into Meghan’s hand. “Get a hot drink,” Sonia added more softly, “it is a cold morning.”

  Megan watched Sonia walk away. She could still smell Sonia’s perfume. Megan was mesmerized by Sonia’s style, her clothes her manner, her utter self-confidence. Her beauty.

  “Some day I’ll be like you.” She whispered to no one in particular.

  Megan shrugged and pocketed the few coins and made her way down a side street. There was an archway where runaways lived, teenagers who had left home. She would see if anyone she knew was there and have a chat.

  Sonia walked assuredly up the road to her solicitor’s office. She was annoyed that the beggar girl had startled her. At least the itinerants were not as forward as the Romanian gypsies who had come as refugees to Ireland. But I work, always I work, she said fiercely to herself. They too should work.

  When Sonia finished with the solicitor she came back to the minibus where Ivan was waiting for her. Ivan was head of security at Morehampton road and they both worked for Solveig.

  “Thanks for the lift.” She said in Russian as she got in.

  “No problem,” Ivan said. Everything all right?”

  As he spoke Ivan manoeuvred the minibus into the road. Sonia noticed Megan come out of a sandwich bar with a paper cup out of which steam was rising.

  “Terrible life, for these kids on the street,” she remarked.

  “Not so tough, they get Social welfare,” Ivan dismissed. “Solicitor say anything?”

  “Yes Ivan. The solicitor is going to make a small offer of damages to the man who was hit by George. He thinks it is O.K. The man wants no publicity.”

  “I will talk to George. Sometimes he is rough.”

  “A Lap dance club has to watch its’ reputation. Solveig wants no bad publicity.”


  ‘Yes, but sometimes the clients are very drunk. Sometimes they think they are charged too much. George is a good bouncer. They don’t make trouble when he is there, except now and then.”

  “Keep him in check till the trouble goes over,” Sonia suggested.

  “No problem.”

  “Some day I will move out of this world and start my own business,” Sonia added as they drove along, “I am getting tired of the sex industry.”

  “Not me,” Ivan grinned, “some day I will have my own string of girls and I will be a somebody.”

  “Don’t look me up.”

  Sonia didn’t bother disguise the contempt in her voice. She did not like Ivan much and considered that being a pimp might be too much for him to handle. In her view he was a tough young man who was in a hurry to make a name for himself. However, they got on reasonably well together in their day-to-day dealings.

  *******

  Jean was in the process of emptying the dishwasher and she froze with plates in both hands. “Your father intends to what?” Jean asked startled.

  “He is well over the cancer,” Peter replied “He said he intends moving out of the Home.’

  “Samuel is not moving in with us.”

  “Dad did not say that.”

  “We have little enough privacy with the kids, I don’t want to have to deal with him. Anyway he bosses you. You are like a child when he gives you orders.”

  “Not any more. I’ve become my own man. I don’t let him tell me what to do.”

  “Well don’t let him tell you he is moving in here because, much as I like him he is not.”

  “O.K. I just mentioned it.”

  “Mentioned it as I am heading out the door Peter. Not a good time.” Jean came and sat at the breakfast table for a moment to sip her cup of coffee, which was getting cold.

  “There is never a good time Jean. Always you are in a hurry.”

  “I have a business to run and a family. You could do more.”

  “I tried last night,” Peter said looking at her across the breakfast table.

  “The kids will be down for breakfast any minute” Jean avoided his comment.

  “You never want to make love anymore.”

  “Sometimes you can’t finish what you start,” Jean countered.

  The silence was filled with the anger between them.

  “I know this sounds crazy,” Jean offered, meeting Peter’s eyes for the first time that morning. “But sometimes you are just too considerate in bed. Just as I am beginning to let go you ask. ‘Am I too heavy darling,’ or ‘should I slow down’, you’re so polite I could scream.”

  “Maybe I should try with someone else?”

  “You do Peter and we will be in the divorce courts so fast your feet won’t hit the ground.” Jean retorted fiercely her eyes blazing.

  “Jean I was just making a light comment, you don’t need to be so intense all the time.”

  “I’m going to call Darra and get him out of bed or he will be late again for school,” Jean said terminating the conversation as she stood up and went to the door. “I’m doing the school run today,” she added and hurried away.

  Peter sighed and buttered a slice of toast.

  *****

  “Do they still make collections for the black babies?” Sally asked sitting at the battered table in the teachers room in the secondary school, which was situated in southwest Dublin.

  “Indeed yes.” Brother Malachy replied. “The Christian Brothers order, of which I am a proud and long serving member, has always supported the missions in Africa. The need is ever greater with AIDS and the corruption. We must do our best.”

  “I’ll give the collection boxes to boys in my next class,” Sally promised.

  “On a break?” Brother Malachy asked as the bell rang and he gathered his notes for the next class. He downed his cup of tea in a gulp and stood up.

  “Two classes free,” Sally spoke with satisfaction and smiled.

  “Lucky you.”

  Brother Malachy departed, leaving Sally with a plastic bag full of folded boxes for the ‘black babies’ collection.

  “Turn them loose on Saturday and tell them to have the collection back for Monday,” he said as he went through the door.

  As Brother Malachy departed Frank McGivney came through the door.

  He grabbed a cup of tea from the machine and sat opposite Sally. “I envy you your two free classes on a Monday morning,” he said in a friendly voice.

  “Sure haven’t you the next session free.”

  “True, but I have to finish correcting the homework. I have the leaving class for math at eleven. I need to give them this homework and collect the homework I gave them at the last class. Busy, busy,” he said cheerfully.

  “Sure talk a minute and finish your tea. How is your mother?”

  “Fine Sally, but a bit inclined to fall. She still cooks my dinner every day. We depend on each other. And yourself?”

  “Donegal as usual for the weekend. Just checked out the mother. She is fine. Going into relief care for a fortnight.”

  “You must have a romance up there. You go to Donegal practically every weekend,” Frank chided. “It is a fierce long distance from Dublin, do you take the bus?”

  “No Frank I drive. I come from there. Dublin people think a few miles are long. Country people are used to driving.”

  But she had lost Frank’s attention, as he drank his mug of tea he began to correct the papers and a silence descended. Sally relaxed. It was lovely to get some peace in a busy school. She sat and watched Frank as he frowned over the papers.

  “Eoin McKeown” Frank said, looking up. “I swear he gets help with his homework. He is thick as two short planks in the class but his homework is nearly as good as Gormley.”

  “Robbo Gormley?”

  “Yes Sally, what do you think of him?”

  “Bright, very bright I’d say, but no motivation. I have to drag his history lessons out of him.”

  “Loves his math. He is one of the best I have ever seen.”

  “I’m glad he is good at something. He seems to be a loner. I like him, he seems so lost, but he never does homework properly and he never seems to mix.”

  But Frank was gone again. Scribbling furiously as he corrected the papers against the clock, to be ready in time for his next class.

  Sally wondered as she looked at him. Frank was a nice person, in her view. Lived at home with his mammy and never seemed to have a serious relationship of any duration with a woman and never dated the female teachers in the school. She wondered how she might attract his attention.

  Chapter two

  Adizua lay in the shadow of the truck he had been working on. All morning he had struggled with the transmission but now it was repaired. The truck could be returned to its’ owner in the afternoon.

  He was careful to stay out of the direct African sunlight and its relentless and sometimes painful intensity.

  Adizua lay high up on the verge in front of one of many wooden huts. Various old signs for Motor oil and the word ‘Repairs” emblazoned on a sign beside the hut indicated that the owner of the hut was in the car repair business.

  Adizua could see where the busy Lagos road rose up into a flyover on his left taking the traffic into the city. Under the flyover and stretching away diagonally from his viewpoint, both right and left of it, there was a street market. At least a thousand souls argued and traded in this area, oblivious to the heat of the day and the noise and smell of the traffic rising up over their heads. It was frenetically busy there all day, every day except Sunday.

  Below him a woman walking towards Lagos stopped, faced the storm drain, pulled up her dress and urinated as she stood, into the storm drain.

  Nwabata came out of the wooden hut to his rear.

  “What have you for me sister” he said languidly, knowing she would have prepared some refreshment.

  “I have a kola-nut and some alligator pepper” Nwabata said, “and some home made
gin.”

  Adizua took the kola-nut. Nwabata put some gin in a ganashi and handed it to him.

  “You spoil me,” he said.

  “You have worked hard this morning Adizua, you deserve a treat. The gin has been in a can for about six months, it should be good”

  Adizua took the drink in a gulp and rolled it around his mouth. He handed the ganashi back to his sister and she filled the ganashi and swallowed the drink in one gulp.

  They agreed it was good gin but had no more. It was too early in the day.

  “The market is busy today,” Adizua said conversationally.

  Adizua and his sister were very close. Nwabata was about ten years older than his eighteen years. Nwabata had married when she was sixteen. However both their mother and father had died soon after Nwabata had married. The father had died in hospital after he had an injection. The mother died soon after him of a fever.

  Nwabata had taken Adizua into her home.

  She had always spoiled him and he liked to relax and hold a conversation with her. They had no other brothers or sisters and over the years had grown even closer. The fact that Nwabata was married with a husband and three young boys had not affected their friendly closeness.

  “I was nearly robbed yesterday,” Nwabata said with a wry smile. “That is a bad market.”

  “Everything is cheap” Adizua countered.

  “But not always real, especially some of the medicines they sell.”

  “You can get everything there, even from a monkeys head to python fat,” Adizua said with a laugh.

  “I’ll admit that “ Nwabata agreed, “but when I go there I put my money on a belt and tie it underneath around my waist. I don’t care that I have to untie it when I buy. There are too many thieves.”