Party Land
Selected for Cairde Short Story Prize, 2021
Hello, welcome to a sample of your monthly short story.
Party Land was selected by Irish authors Louise Kennedy and Sinead Gleeson for the shortlist of the inaugural Cairde Short Story Prize, 2021. This short story is from my collection of linked short stories, Take Me to Palestine Street.
Influences on this fictional work are from my time of working at The Irish News office when I was 18, my first Belfast party on the Antrim Road, and the time I lived in the Holylands, Belfast. Also, the job offer that I never took: receptionist at a funeral home.
Let me know what you think :)
Party Land
Now they are into the rhythm of summer, warm beer and curry chips, crawling home at the scrake of dawn. HG feels the bump of stolen wine against her ribs, the contents of her bag a sneaky revenge on some sectarian gobshites whose party they have departed.
To hell with them, they cannot spoil her first real love with bitter slogans and unearned ballads. Not one of them ever had to outwit an Ulster Says No mob. What would they know about a gun to the head?
She watches for her reflection in sleepy windows; her belly carved nicely flat by late nights and spliffs, but she could turn into a fat fool if not careful. Davy’s long hollow legs are striding alongside her. He can eat like a savage and not put on an ounce. ‘Have no fear, HG,’ he often says, ‘you can’t fatten a thoroughbred.’
A thoroughbred, alright. He calls her HG, short for Hat Girl, especially in one-sided company where it’s not safe to say her real name. He is known by his real name Davy when in Prod territory and Declan when in a Taig crowd. This system is working rightly but he’s been blethering lately that she can’t keep answering to initials forever. Says the solution would be to let him change her surname at least. Smith could be Catholic or Protestant could it not? Wouldn’t matter a damn where they party-ed with a name like Smith.
She rolls her eyes at the notion. In Belfast, in every bar they are safe to frequent, she sees wedding-ring men lined up, not one wife in sight, vultures waiting on the first girl with a bag of cans to lead the way to party land.
‘You were supposed to be Declan,’ she reminds him about the flat they’ve just left, where Davy stared blankly any time he was called by his Catholic name.
‘Aye, it’s easier for you, Hat Girl. In Prod places you only have to mention being from Larne, they think you’re one a them. Anyway. What about this big day out? You and me, HG?’
Another proposal.
The previous ones were like now: approaching daybreak, eyes reddened by spliffs, feet intent on town to get across town to get to the Holylands to get upstairs to jump each other’s bones and fall asleep in a narrow creaky bed. It was heart lurching the first time but could she listen to lines like that for the rest of her life? What if he grows a moustache again?
‘Davy,’ she says, ‘promise me you will never grow a moustache again, then I’ll consider marriage.’
This is met with a grim silence which stretches to the end of Cedar Avenue and a skyward stare that might mean he’s off his tits still or else he’s quietly huffing. Her own stonedness has melted into stagnant puddles of tiredness, impatience, a desperate longing to not do this three mile walk from here to Palestine Street.
The Antrim Road echoes their footfall in breach of its dead quiet. No bird song, no cars, no sirens. The doomful drums of Walk in Silence come into her head. Joy Division. It was played at the party until the host wheeked it off the record player and put on The Wolfe Tones. Bloody philistine, the twinkly star part of the song has been denied her, she is musically bereft.
Davy is dead quiet compared to his usual morning chirpiness. A sneaky dread is ascending her limbs, clawing its way to her heart. She is a terrible person and calls herself a hateful bitch often enough to know it to be true. Why can she not be nice to this tall fella of a boyfriend?
***
They met at a party, of course. She thinks again about Night One, when he was heading home, walking away backwards up the footpath. She was half interested in the Adrian Mole glasses but wary of the moustache.
‘Do you have a phone?’ he said.
‘Not on me, no.’
‘Stop sleggin. At work, I mean.’
She was after lying to him at the party, saying she worked as an office girl in Queen’s University.
‘There are a million phones.’
‘Can I have your number but?’
‘It’s in the book.’
‘What department?’
‘Science.’
‘Did you know that dead professor?’
‘Only to say hello to.’
Always people were jittery if they thought you worked with someone who got shot. She’d not been working with him, it was all a big lie, although true enough she’d seen his body bag arrive at the funeral home, absorbed his family’s tears.
‘Have you a pen?’ she had said on Night One to stop further questions.
He wrote the number she gave on his shirt cuff. Fancy move.
‘Try not to sound like a moustachio or they’ll not put you through,’ was her parting shot. Why the eff did he even phone her?