Thursdays at the Black Swan are a unique beast. It’s almost but not quite the weekend so punters come for one or two, the best of intentions all round, and then stay until they’re thrown out after midnight. It’s already busy when I get here, but at least it means I’ve little time to think about school. I flit from the floor to the bar in a choreographed whirl with Martina, leaving her to deal with the rowdies at the far end of the room. I’m up near the door with half an eye on it. Joe’s said he’ll call in with news of his showdown with McQueen, though I’m so tired of it all I’m not sure what difference any of it will make.
Joe arrives as momentum builds at the bar and he has to hang at the end of it, chatting to one of the old-timers. It’s only after final, final pints have been pulled that I get a chance to join him. Mam slips me a glass of Fürstenberg with Joe’s last pint and we find a corner to chat.
“It’s heaving in here tonight,” says Joe. “Hope you’re making some money out of it.”
“Are you joking? I’m lucky if I scrape together a pound from the measly tips I get here.”
“You serious? I’ve friends working in The Bad Ass Café who make almost as much in tips as they get paid.”
“That’s the food. And the Americans. They know how to tip, but they’ve fuck all reason to come to Ballybrack.”
“That’s true.”
Joe sinks the top of his fresh pint and then wipes a Guinness foam mustache from his top lip.
“So how did you get on?” I ask.
“Yeah, right. Well, I didn’t get any confessions out of him, but it was … weird.”
“Whatcha mean? Weird, how?”
“He was obsessed with what I was writing down. He kept joking about it, but it wasn’t funny after the fifth time.”
“Like, in a control-freak kinda way?”
“Yeah, sorta. I think he’s so used to journalists fawning over him, and he probably thought I’d be even worse, like I’d be in awe of him with me only being a student. He was obviously expecting a puff piece where he’d give me a few lines and I’d be eternally grateful for them, d’ye know what I mean?”
I laugh at the idea of Joe making the great Maurice McQueen squirm.
“He started off on a charm offensive, saying he’d look out for me and give me exclusives when I’m out in the real world. I can see how all that shite works on people who don’t know him. And I got all the big-man stuff, you know, all his achievements and awards. Sure I knew all that already.”
He pulls out a cigarette and offers it to me. I shake my head and he fires it up and blows the first lungful out the side of his mouth.
“But I noticed something when I was talking to him, only with the girls, never the boys. The way they’d wait at the side of the pool for him to tell them what to do. Like they had no minds of their own. It was just some of the girls but enough to make me wonder what sort of mind games he’s playing with them.”
“Did you get to talk to any of them?” I ask.
“That was the other thing,” he says. “He had a go at me when I asked to talk to the swimmers, said he’d never agreed to it. But I gave him all this guff about human interest and students inspiring students, blah, blah, blah, and he called Shauna over—I didn’t even have to ask for her.”
My heart picks up speed at the mention of her.
“She’s certainly, eh…” he says.
“A ride?”
He laughs, but there’s a flush in his cheeks.
“That’s one way of putting it all right.”
He tilts his head as he takes a drag of his fag.
“Yeah, so anyway, she talked about her hopes and her plans, you know, classic one-liners about inspiration and commitment. But then, when I started asking about her relationship with McQueen, you know, working so closely and spending so much time together, she froze. She kept looking over at him, and then he must have got spooked too cos he came over and told her to get back in the pool. He couldn’t get me out of there fast enough after that.”
“Jesus,” I say. “So, what are you going to write about?”
“Honestly, I dunno. I’ve got no evidence of anything, just a hunch he was hiding something. I’d get thrown out of a real newsroom trying to make something out of that.”
“Use me,” I say before I get a chance to engage my brain. “Interview me. You can write about everything he did to me.”
Maybe this will be enough. I have suffered too, and I’ve no reason to keep quiet anymore. I can shout about what I know and nobody can stop me.
“Ah Lou,” says Joe, frowning, “I can’t do that. You’d be expelled from that school for starters.”
“I’m leaving at Christmas anyway.”
“What?”
I do trust Joe, but he doesn’t need to know about my family finances.
“I’ve had enough of him,” I say. “I want to get as far away from him as possible. But first, I want to crucify him.”
When he’s sure I’m sure, I see the start of a smile curl on his lips, and I feel the heaviness rise from my chest. My testimony is a start but it’s not worth as much without proof. And I know exactly where to look for that.
“MR. MCQUEEN IS A RAPIST.”
Melissa splutters out a laugh and looks at me wide-eyed and incredulous, waiting for the punchline. I let my words hang in the air as a sullen drizzle starts to spit and we take shelter under a cedar that seems to stretch into the clouds.
“What are you talking about?” says Melissa, her smile fading slowly to a mystified pout.
“You know my friend, Tina? The one who killed herself?”
“The swimmer? Yeah.”
“He raped her and got her pregnant.”
“What? No way.” She’s all ears now. “How do you know?”
“She was my friend. She told me.”
Melissa bites her lip as she takes it all in.
“But why would Mr. McQueen need to rape anyone? He’s got half the swimming club swooning over him.”
That’s what everyone will say. I’ve asked myself the same question so many times: why would he bother? Wouldn’t a good-looking, successful man be able to get sex without having to force himself on teenagers?
“It’s about power,” I say. “He thinks he can get whatever he wants from anyone.”
“How would you know?”
“Because he tried it with me too.”
I’m sure Melissa doesn’t mean to laugh, but it’s all she can do with this onslaught.
“Sorry, I need to get this straight. Mr. McQueen tried to rape you? Where? When?”
“It started in his car on the way home from a hockey match.”
“Yeah,” she says. “I heard the rumors about the two of you.”
This time, I can’t hold back the fury.
“Jesus Christ, Melissa, I’m trying to tell you about something horrible that happened to me. Please listen to me, I’m begging you.”
She holds her hands up in apology.
“OK, OK, I’m sorry. I’m listening.”
I steady myself as I tell her about the car, his office, my bedroom. She raises her eyebrows at that, as if the other locations were somehow more understandable. I bet she thought I’d given off the wrong signals, getting into his car, going to his office.
“But…” she starts, “do you think anybody is going to believe you?”
“No.”
“So…?”
“It’s not about me, that’s over. It’s about who he’s still doing it to.”
I give her a moment to let my allegation sink in. The rain taps a rhythm on the canopy above us, only solitary drops falling through onto the soft, needled ground.
“No.” She shakes her head. “Shauna?”
“She hasn’t told me outright, but I tried to talk to her about him and, well, she didn’t deny it.”
“But … she would have told me,” says Melissa.
“I didn’t know about Tina, and she was my best friend too. I was so angry with her for deserting me when all the time he was threatening to drop her from the team if she didn’t have sex with him.”
I know what Melissa is feeling, the gut-punch that she was right all along, that Shauna has been involved with McQueen. And then the guilt that she is still jealous of their relationship.
“Do you know the worst thing?” I say. “I still resented her for being with him, I couldn’t help it. If I could do it all again…”
“What?”
“I’d destroy him.”
“How?”
“I’d catch him in the act, take a photo.”
There’s a glimmer of mischief in her now as I start to reel her in.
“And do what with it?” she asks.
“First, I’d make sure he knew I had it. That’d keep him away from her. And then I’d start talking to other people at the club, girls who might have seen or heard something, and let them know I had proof. It might help them remember things they’d conveniently forgotten.”
“And would you go to the Guards then?”
“Yeah, but only when I’d got enough people to back me up.”
Melissa smiles.
“You’ve got it all worked out.”
“All I need is an accomplice.”
She looks out into the threads of rain that fall like a veil across the lawn and laughs, shaking her head at the same time.
“Fuck it,” she says. “I’m in.”