You shouldn’t have taken off your bally, he says to me. What the fuck were you thinking? The fucking game’s up, I says to him. The fucking game is up. I don’t even know why I said that then. Just fucking ranting and raving. By this point I was delirious with pain and confusion. What are you talking about? Mad Frank Marby says to me. There’s nothing to worry about. Everybody’s fucking dead. There’s not a sinner left alive to recognise you. But I had been recognised, even though none of us realised it at the time. The dead had recognised one of their own.

*

A gloomy Sunday in December and I had arranged to meet Kathy in Carrickfergus. At the shore in Carrickfergus I sat and I waited and waited. I waited till dreams like my heart were all broken. After two hours I give up and I go to leave but before I go I look around and I look at that wee bench one last time, that wee bench that had waited all its life for the two of us, that view that was kept only for us. I go to leave but then I have a mad thought. I’ve got a chatsby stuck down the band of my trousers and I thought about taking it out and loosing a few bullets into the sea. I thought about shooting the fucking waves dead. I had to laugh. Sure, you’re some man, Xamuel, I says to myself, you’re some fucking man, right enough. It’s not out there, I says to myself, standing there, looking at the wind and the waves, not anymore.

*

See if you like this one:

Pat says to Mick, here Mick, did you see that Christmas is on a Friday this year?

Ah fuck, Mick says to him, let’s just hope it’s not the fucking thirteenth.

*

Christmas in the Ardoyne and we’re all up The Shamrock. The massacre is all over the papers. IRA Scum Slaughter Their Own. Republican Feud Culminates In Bloodbath. Behind the scenes, the bloody gears. But somehow I don’t feel like celebrating.

Barney shouts me a pint of green. Fuck’s wrong with you, he says to me, you’re a secret hero. But all I do is shrug my shoulders like a satisfied snake. Who knew Mad Frank Marby was such a top fucking chanter? Barney says to me, and he nods to the stage. Mad Frank Marby is up there looking like a rapist singing ‘The Way We Were’, with his wife down the front, loving it. Fucking secret heroes, I says to myself. Listen, Barney, I says to him, I’m not feeling it, my friend, I think I’m going to head home. You’re losing it, he says to me, and he shakes his head. We’re going to have to put you out to graze, he says. I’ll phone you a taxi, he says to me, and we walk out to the lobby together, me swinging away on my new crutches.