Shergar Ch10 (draft 1)

I PROMISED I would tell you about the day I met John F McGann in Dublin with Jonathan. Well, that was the day, the crazy day we went into the George Street Arcade and found out the 20p coin was worth a fortune.

Afterwards, when I walked out onto George Street it was as if the world had changed. I saw everything through the eyes of a rich man. Cars moved in slow motion. Everyone was smiling. I floated along, the pavement a smooth silver glow beneath my feet.

“Where to now?” Jonathan said.

My mum had been to Dublin a million times but she acted like a tourist, standing in the middle of the pavement where other people wanted to walk, her head swivelling round like she’d been dumped on Mars and told to find her way home.

“What time is it?” she said.

There was a clock right across the street, build into the wall above the doorway of bookmakers. The face was cracked and the hands said three o’clock, which made my mum panic until she pulled out her phone. The correct time was 11.45.

“Come on, we better move or we’ll be late,’’ she said.

“Late for what? I said.

She was already walking in the opposite direction. We almost had to run to keep up with her. “We have to meet someone on Grafton Street at noon, outside Bewley’s Cafe.”

“Who?” I said.

“It’s a surprise.”

My mum liked surprises. They made the world interesting, she said. They didn’t for me. Surprises were never good surprises, they were always something you didn’t want. Like the checked jacket and the Star Wars jigsaw I got for my last birthday.

“Please tell me.”

She gave in. “Your grandad.”

“Grandad Danny,’’ I said. I mean I didn’t say it. I kind of shouted it. At last, a good surprise.

She looked at me like I had said ****.

“He lives in Glasgow,’’ she said. “We’re meeting Grandad John.”

“Who?”

Yes, I know. Give me a medal and hang it round my neck. Grandchild of the century, that’s me.

HE WAS waiting for us outside the cafe. He wasn’t as thin as I remember him and he didn’t try to be so friendly. He shook my hand and didn’t hang on like it was the greatest moment of his life, which was fine by me.

“How have you been, young man?” he said.

At that exact moment I was the happiest I had ever been in my whole life, if he wanted to know the honest truth. “Good, thanks.”

My mum introduced him to Jonathan and then we all went inside the cafe and found a big table upstairs amongst the tourists. My mum and Mr McGann — it was too soon to think of him as my grandad — went downstairs to get the food while Jonathan and me guarded the table.

“So he’s your grandad?” Jonathan said, and then when I nodded” “You acted like you hardly knew him.”

“That’s because I hardly know him,’’ I said.

“How come?” Jonathan said.

“He’s been living in Spain for a long time,’’ I said.

“Interesting,’’ Jonathan said, although I don’t think he meant it.

We talked about what we would do with the money from the coin. I had made a list in my head — Beats headphones, Fitbit, PS4, games, trip to Barcelona to see Messi, iPhone 8 and more, much more — but I knew I wouldn’t be allowed to get any of it, except maybe one thing. My dad would make me do something sensible with my share of the money, like save it for going to college. But it was was good to dream. Sometimes I think dreaming about something is almost as good as getting something.

Jonathan had no doubt what he was getting. “A Draganfly X8,’’ he said.

“A what?”

“A drone,’’ he said. “Carbon fibre frame, eight motors, defineratial thrust High-def video, GPS satellite tracking system — a bargain at only seven thousand pounds.”

I’m glad my mum came back with trays of food right then otherwise Jonathan would have gone on and on about this spectacular drone and all the crazy stuff it had that I didn’t have the first clue about.

I HAD the chicken tenders and chips and it was okay. Jonathan had the same. The others had spaghetti. My mum said it was cold and overcooked and hardly ate any. John F McGann said she should take it back to the counter and ask for a refund. She doesn’t like to cause a fuss so when she said it wasn’t worth the hassle he took the plate. ‘Be back in the a minute,’’ he said and that was that.

He handed my mum the money from the refund. She said thanks but I don’t think she meant it so much. As I said, she doesn’t like to make a fuss, not even when she is sitting at a table and the fuss is going on at the food counter. I told her she could eat some of my chips and she said should would but she didn’t. It was all kind of awkward, if you want to know the honest truth.

The next hour was the longest in human history, I promise. Last year I watched this YouTube video of my brother coming third in the Irish Junior National Championships 800m. That led me to watch a whole of other running videos, mostly funny ones where people fall head first into the water during the steeplechase, stupid stuff like that. There was one of a marathon runner who was so exhausted coming down the home straight that he just lay down and went to sleep. Some people tried to wake him up but he didn’t want to. Eventually, they managed this poor guy onto his feet and point him in the direction of the finish line. But he took a few steps then fell to his knees. He stared ahead for a few seconds, like he was trying to work out what he was doing there, and then got back on his feet. Then he took another two steps and fell down again. I don’t know what happened after that because I switched it off. It was too painful to watch. The poor guy is probably still on the track, trying to get to the finish line.

Anyway, that was what it was what the conversation was like in Bewley’s Cafe. Like it would never end.

It wasn’t my mum’s fault, it wasn’t Jonathan’s fault and it definitely wasn’t me. I’m not going to blame John F McGann either. It just happens sometimes, when you are having a conversation and everybody involved is trying to think of something to say, anything to make sure there isn’t any silence at the table. Everybody knows what is happening, they can feel it. But no-one says anything. They just keep struggling on, like that poor guy trying to get to the finish line.

At least we had the coin to talk about. John F McGann asked some questions about that and then my mum asked some, even though she knew everything there was to know about what happened. She was just trying to make sure there weren’t any awkward silences.

I understood this but I didn’t really say that much. You know the way they say in school tests, “Give Full Answers”? Well, I didn’t, even though I could tell my mum really wanted me to. I wish I could say it was because I sensed even then there was something that wasn’t quite right about John F McGann, that he perhaps had some crazy stories of his own he hadn’t told me. But the truth was I just didn’t want to talk.

AFTERWARDS, we went for a walk through the city centre. It was much less awkward because the adults went ahead and we didn’t have to talk to them much. Jonathan and I wanted to look in a video game shop at the bottom end of Grafton Street. My mum said we could a because she wanted to take a look at the nice things in the big fancy shop opposite called Brown Thomas, but only for fifteen minutes. This wasn’t enough time to find all the video games I was going to buy once the coin had been sold and I was rich but at least I made a start. There were twenty-five games I liked — times fifty Euros each, equaled more than a thousand Euros.

We ended up on O’Connell Street, standing outside the GPO amongst all the crazy tourists with their phone cameras. My mum didn’t tell me it was going to be an educational day trip but it turned out it was and there was no point in protesting about it. At least she didn’t take us on a tour of Trinity College, which we passed on the way from Grafton Street. I have to say, looked pretty posh. Maybe I would like to be a student there one day, but don’t tell my dad I said that.

I am not going to give you the whole Irish history story and the Easter Rising and all that craziness back in 1916. You probably know it already but if you don’t, I’m just going to tell you this one thing about this man called Padraig Pearce who stood outside the Post Office building at the start of the Easter Rising and read out the Proclamation of the Irish Republic.

We place the cause of the Irish Republic under the the most High God ….

We learned the Proclamation off by heart at school. Poor old Padraig Pearse, standing in the street telling everyone about the Most High God and how he was going to look after the Irish Republic and then he ends up getting shot by the British firing squad. The Most High God must have been too busy that day doing other stuff to bother about poor old Mr Pearse.

There was an original copy of the Proclamation on display inside. We queued up with all the other people so could take a look at this piece of paper in a glass case. I’m not going to lie — it didn’t look like much, just an old piece paper with some words on it. But that’s between you and me. My dad would kill me if he knew I said that, not that he’s a big of fan of Padraig Pearse or the Irish rebels. It’s the history he likes, all that “if you don’t know where you come from you’ll never know where you’re going” shenanigans.

Shenanigans — that’s a word my dad sometimes uses.

An odd thing happened when we went back outside after we saw the Proclamation. Jonathan and John F McGann had an argument, kind of. They didn’t shout at each other or anything crazy like that but you could tell they annoyed each other.

It started when we were looking at the bullet holes in the Post Office wall and John F McGann said two thousand innocent Irish heroes were murdered by the British Army and how it was one of the most barbaric crimes in history.

Jonathan stared at the bullet holes. “1916 — that was the same year as the Battle of the Somme,’’ he said eventually.

You remember I told you military history was one of his hobbies? Well, he knew a lot about the Battle of the Somme, which I happen to know (without looking it up on the internet) took place during World War One.

“Over a million people died during the Battle of the Somme, including three thousand soldiers from the 36th Ulster Division and the 16th Irish Division,” he said.

“More fool them,’’ John F McGann said.

And that was it. There could have been more but my mum was listening. She didn’t like the conversation so she made this big show of looking at the time on her phone.

“Holy Mary, mother of God,’’ she said. ‘We need to be getting on the road. Brendan will think we’ve run away to America with his precious coin.”

I wanted to tell her it was my precious coin but I knew what she was up to so I didn’t say a word. Like her, I didn’t want anything to spoil one of the best days of my life.

THAT night, when mum and dad were at the kitchen table playing cards and I was watching Sherlock on TV with Jonathan he asked me where John F McGann had lived before I came home that afternoon and found him sitting with my mom.

“Spain, I think,’’ I said.

Jonathan thought about this for a second. “For how long?”

“I think my mum said thirty years but you can ask her yourself if you like.”

He shook his head. “It’s okay.”

I know it’s only a stupid television show but Sherlock Holmes really was a genius, the way he figured thing about by spotting stuff other people didn’t notice.

“Why are you asking where he lived?” I said.

Come to think of it, Jonathan looked a little bit like the actor who played Sherlock Holmes — tall and skinny, with floppy hair and this far-away look on his face, like he knew what you were going to do or say even before you did.

“It’s nothing really,’’ he said. “Just his hands.”

“What about them?”

“They were very white,’’ he said. “Not the hands of someone who has lived in Spain for thirty years.”