Rhino What You Did Last Summer Read online

  Rhino What You Did Last Summer

  ROSS O’CARROLL-KELLY

  (as told to Paul Howard)

  Illustrated by

  ALAN CLARKE

  PENGUIN IRELAND

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  www.penguin.com

  First published 2009

  Copyright © Paul Howard, 2009

  Illustrations copyright © Alan Clarke, 2009

  Penguin Ireland thanks O’Brien Press for its agreement to Penguin Ireland

  using the same design approach and typography, and the same artist,

  as O’Brien Press used in the first four Ross O’Carroll-Kelly titles

  The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted

  All rights reserved

  Without limiting the rights under copyright

  reserved above, no part of this publication may be

  reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system,

  or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical,

  photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior

  written permission of both the copyright owner and

  the above publisher of this book

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978-0-14-193266-8

  Contents

  Prologue

  1. Right back where we started from

  2. On the shores of Lake Ewok

  3. My fifteen minutes

  4. This is my comeback, girl

  5. Ross, His Mother, His Wife and Her Lover

  6. A brand new face for the boys on MTV

  7. A dream is a wish your heart makes

  8. An inconvenient truth

  9. The dreaming days when the mess was made

  10. Vegas, Baby

  11. Bringing down the house

  Acknowledgements

  ‘We may see the small value God has for riches

  by the people he gives them to.’

  Alexander Pope

  Prologue

  The old man looks up at us, over the top of his reading glasses, and says the cunillo is wonderful.

  Erika lifts her glass and goes, ‘Happy New Year,’ but I’m too in shock to return the toast. So her and the old man end up just clinking glasses.

  ‘It will be,’ he goes. ‘It will be now.’

  I look at him, then back at her. I don’t see it. I don’t see any resemblance at all. Or maybe I don’t want to see it. It’s one of those shocks that’s, like, too big to take in all at once.

  I stand up. Except I don’t actually remember standing up? Let’s just say I find myself suddenly standing up.

  He turns to her and goes, ‘Oh, here comes the waiter – have you decided what you’re going to have?’

  She’s practically popping out of that black satin bustier, but of course I’m not allowed to even notice shit like that anymore.

  I’ve got to get out of here. I stort walking. I hear him call me. I hear her call me as well. But I keep going.

  I walk out of the restaurant, out of the hotel and out onto the street. It’s snowing – coming down pretty heavy, in fact.

  I get in the cor, turn the key – still in a daze – and point her in the direction of actual Barcelona.

  I put my foot down and I’m suddenly tearing along all these narrow cliff roads in the pitch dork with the snow blinding me, not giving a fock – if I’m being honest – whether I even crash?

  But then my phone suddenly beeps. It’s, like, a text message from Sorcha, saying that she and Honor are thinking about me and that they’re hoping that we beat Ireland A. She obviously knows fock-all about rugby, but it’s still an amazing message to get and I kill my speed, suddenly remembering everything I have to live for, and realizing at that moment exactly where I’m headed.

  What happened back there in the restaurant has made me realize that I need to be with my family. I need to see my own daughter and I need to find out if there’s still a chance with Sorcha. I focked things up there like only I know how. But I need to know if there’s still something there. Because it’s with her and Honor that I actually belong.

  I notice a set of lights in my rearview and somehow I know they belong to Erika.

  Soon I arrive at the border crossing. The dude operating the barrier can’t believe it’s me. His eyes are out on practically stalks. ‘I hear eet on the reddio,’ he goes. ‘It hees true? We score a try hagainst Island?’

  I nod. ‘We also kept them to less than a hundred points,’ I go, which is the bigger achievement.

  ‘A try hagainst Island!’ he goes. ‘You are hero to all of Handorra!’

  He waves away my passport. No interest in even seeing it. I look in the mirror and watch Erika’s lights approach.

  ‘Dude,’ I go, ‘can you do me a favour? I’m trying to give this bird behind me the slip…’

  He’s there, ‘Ha crezzy fan, yes?’

  I’m like, ‘Something like that. Can you make sure there’s some kind of paperwork she’s got to fill in? As in, a lot of it?’

  ‘For you,’ he goes, lifting the barrier for me, ‘effery theeng hees poseeble.’

  I put the foot down and off I go again, snaking through the Pyrenees, and I’m suddenly having one of my world-famous intellectual moments, thinking about how much your life can change in the space of an hour. It’s like, there I was earlier tonight, being carried around the pitch shoulder-high, the hero of a – pretty much – country, which I’ve now left behind and will probably never see again. And it turns out that Erika’s my sister.

  My mind drifts back to a day, whatever, six, seven years ago, the day her old dear’s divorce from Tim became final. Erika was majorly upset. I called around, supposedly to offer my sympathies, and we ended up going at it like two jailbirds on a conjugal visit.

  I snap back to reality, realizing, very suddenly, that the border guard won’t be able to hold her for long – not with her chorms. And not in that bustier.

  I put the foot down again.

  It takes, like, two and a half hours, but I finally reach the airport. It’s, like, two o’clock in the morning when I pull up outside the main terminal building, throwing the rental cor in a set-down area, not even bothering my hole to return it, just leaving the keys in the basically ignition.

  I realize that I don’t even have any baggage. All my clobber’s still back at the aportment.

  I peg it in and check the deportures board, my eyes going up and down what to me is just a mass of letters, waiting for two words to jump out at me: Los Angeles. There they are.

 
LA. The Windy City. Call it what you want – but that’s where I’m headed.

  I miss Honor so much that when I think about her, it feels like I’m having a hort attack. And, if I’m being honest, Sorcha too, even if she’s with an auditor now.

  The flight leaves at, like, 7.00 a.m. I order a first-class ticket using my old man’s credit cord – the least he owes me in the circumstances.

  There’s, like, a major crowd hanging around the actual deporture gate. As I get closer, I realize that it’s the Ireland A team. They must be going out on a chorter.

  Suddenly, roysh, they’re all turned around, looking straight at me, all in their blazers and chinos. We’re talking Keith Earls. We’re talking Jeremy Staunton. We’re talking Johnny Sexton. I’m expecting words like traitor to be suddenly bandied around like there’s no actual tomorrow? But someone – might even be Roger Wilson – storts clapping, roysh, then one by one they all join in and before I know it the sea of Ireland A players has suddenly ported, and I’m being given a guard of honour through the deportures gate.

  It’s actually just what I need.

  But it’s as I’m reaching the end of the line that I hear her voice. ‘Ross!’ she goes.

  Of course, I should keep walking – I don’t know why I don’t? Maybe because I hear one or two wolf-whistles from the Ireland A goys. I turn around. She’s obviously been crying, from the state of her boat.

  She goes, ‘Please don’t go!’

  I’m there, ‘I need to get my head around this – time, space, blahdy blahdy blah.’

  ‘Do you think I’m not confused?’ she goes. ‘Do you think I’m not angry? How can I ever trust my mum again?’

  I go to turn around. ‘I’m going to spend some time with my daughter and my – still – wife.’

  ‘I could come with you,’ she goes. ‘We could get to know each other.’

  I’m there, ‘Maybe down the line. Right now, I need to get my head straight – see Sorcha, maybe find out if there’s still…’

  ‘A chance?’

  ‘I was going to say a sniff. But yeah.’

  She suddenly throws her orms around me, buries her head in my chest, then on go the waterworks. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see one or two of the Ireland A players looking at me, obviously thinking, whoa, rather you than me, Dude.

  I rub her bare back and tell her she should be wearing more. She pulls away and looks at me, rivers of mascara running down her face, and says she left the restaurant in such a hurry, she forgot her coat.

  I kiss her on the forehead and her hair smells of, I don’t know, almonds and dandelions. I feel a sudden and familiar tightening in my trousers and, hating myself, I quickly turn away from her and tell her that I’d love to stay longer, but I’ve got, like, a plane to catch?

  1. Right back where we started from

  ‘How do you like them babies?’ he goes, pointing at his shoes with a rolled-up copy of the Wall Street Journal. ‘John Lobb custom brogues. Want to know what they cost?’

  I actually don’t?

  ‘Four! Thousand! Dollars!’ he goes anyway.

  Of course, I just shrug, because it doesn’t matter how good the Toms are – a man wearing a bluetooth earpiece is only five-eighths of a man.

  Still, it’s not up to me to tell him.

  ‘Cillian!’ Sorcha goes. ‘We’re supposed to be showing Ross around the house – not what you’re wearing?’

  This isn’t, like, jealousy or anything, but I’ve never worked out what she sees in this tosspot.

  I mention – being nice more than anything – that it’s some pile of stones and straight away he has to mention that Beechwood Canyon is one of the most prestigious addresses in the Hollywood Hills.

  It’s only focking rented anyway.

  ‘Madonna used to live, like, up the road?’ Sorcha goes. ‘And Forest Whitaker. And who else, Pookie?’

  Pookie? Jesus!

  He’s there, ‘Aldous Huxley – if that name means anything to you, Ross,’ pretty much looking to be decked?

  They lead me out into this, like, huge entrance hallway. ‘It’s essentially a classic, 1930s-style Spanish villa,’ he goes. ‘Ten thousand square feet. Twelve bedrooms. Sixteen bathrooms. Eight-car garage. Pool. Spa. Home theatre. Four bars. Three-hundred-and-sixty-degree views…’

  I pull a face as if to say, you know – wouldn’t exactly be my cup of tea?

  Then they lead me into the kitchen, which Sorcha mentions is – oh my God! – the kitchen she’s, like, always wanted?

  The whole gaff is like something off MTV Cribs, in fairness to it.

  She’s there, ‘It’s got, like, a gourmet centre island,’ which I can see for myself, ‘with, like, three Sub-Zero refrigerators, an actual chef’s Morice stove, a Fisher and Paykel double-drawer dishwasher and a built-in Nespresso…’

  ‘It’s a limited edition one as well,’ he goes. ‘You can’t buy them in the shops,’ and then, for no reason at all, he storts doing these, like, stretching exercises. This is a goy, bear in mind, who never played rugby.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Sorcha goes, ‘I haven’t even asked you about your flight.’

  I’m like, ‘Yeah, the flight was fine,’ pulling up a high stool. ‘Bit wrecked after it.’

  ‘Have you decided yet what you’re going to do for a carbon offset?’

  It’s amazing. I’ve known Sorcha for, like, ten years – been married to her for, what, three and a bit? – and she still knocks me sideways with questions like that.

  ‘Because what you can do,’ she goes, ‘to pay off your emission debt, is set up a standing order with one of those companies that plant trees on your behalf. That way you can fly and drive with no, like, guilt at all.’

  ‘I already do,’ would be the wrong thing to say, so instead I just go, ‘Cool,’ cracking on to actually give a fock about, I suppose, world affairs.

  She asks me if I fancy a coffee and I tell her I’d actually prefer to see Honor, if I could.

  ‘Bad news,’ he suddenly goes, ‘we’ve just put her down.’ Sorcha’s like, ‘Cillian!’ and he’s there, ‘Sorcha, if you wake her now, she’ll be awake for the night. And I told you I’ve got that report to read on the high default rates on subprime and adjustable rate mortgages and their likely impact on the US economy.’

  Adjustable rate mortgages? I’m thinking, he’s getting decked – I don’t give a fock how much Sorcha likes him.

  But then she goes, ‘Ross hasn’t seen his daughter for, like, three months, Cillian. He’s just flown for ten hours,’ and then she turns around to me and she’s like, ‘Ross, come on…’ and she leads me back out into the hall and up this big, winding staircase.

  Honor’s is the fourth bedroom on the right. I push the door, but when I catch, like, a glimpse of her curls in the light from the window, I end up just, like, filling up with tears and I have to actually turn away. All I want to do – I don’t know why – is peg it back down the stairs and out of there. But Sorcha grabs me in, like, a clinch and whispers that it’s okay, I suppose I’d have to say soothingly, in my ear. ‘Take your time,’ she goes, running her hand through my hair, so I take a few seconds to, like, compose myself, then I turn around and, with her orm around me, Sorcha sort of, like, slow-walks me over to the bed.

  I get down on my knees and watch her tiny sleeping face. She’s so beautiful. ‘I can’t believe how much she’s changed,’ I go, ‘even in that time.’

  Sorcha tells me that she still looks like me, which she doesn’t. She’s actually a ringer for Sorcha, but it’s still, like, a really nice thing for her to say?

  I stroke her little cheek and go, ‘I’ve missed you so much,’ and she actually opens her eyes for, like, two or three seconds, then closes them again.

  I turn around to Sorcha and go, ‘I better let her sleep,’ and Sorcha’s like, ‘Why don’t you come back in the morning? You can take her for the day?’

  I ask her if she’s sure and she’s like, ‘Ross, I feel – oh my God – so guilt
y for taking her away from you,’ and I tell her not to be stupid, then I tell her – because I obviously didn’t want to say it in front of him – that she looks well herself, as in really well, as in really well to the point of pretty much incredible?

  She says it’s possible to be practically vegan in LA and that she’s been pretty much existing on mango slices and tempeh sausage patties. She says she also can’t believe how much she underestimated the power of the blender.

  I tell her I’m not just talking weight-wise. I’m there, ‘You’re, I don’t know, glowing? The States has always suited you,’ remembering how well she always looked when she came back from her J1er and how it always made me feel guilty for doing the dirt on her while she was away.

  She smiles and says thank you. She smells of buttermilk moisturizer and in normal circumstances – you know me – I’d try to throw the lips on her there and then. But I don’t, because, well, I think deep down I know that the reason she looks so amazing is that I haven’t been in her life.

  ‘Hey, what are you doing tonight?’ she suddenly goes.

  I’m there, ‘I was just going to head back to the hotel – basically crash.’

  She’s like, ‘Okay, you’re not? I’m going to take you to, like, the best hot dog place in – oh my God – the actual world.’

  See, she knows I’m a focker for the hot dogs.

  ‘You haven’t lived until you’ve tasted these,’ she goes.

  We head downstairs and she tells Cillian she’s taking me to Pink’s. And even though he tries to play it cool, roysh, you can tell he’s not a happy bunny? ‘I thought you were tired,’ he goes to me, showing me his entire hand. It’s like playing poker with your focking granny.

  I’m there, ‘I think I’m getting my actual second wind.’

  ‘Well, I’ll come as well,’ he goes, but Sorcha’s there, ‘Er – and leave Honor on her own? Cillian, you said you had work to do. We’ll only be, like, an hour. Two at the most,’ and I make sure to give him a big shit-eating smile on the way out the door.

  We’re heading for, like, North La Brea, but Sorcha tells me I can switch off the SatNav because she, like, knows the way? I ask her what she thinks of the cor – we’re talking a BMW 650 convertible – and she goes, ‘How did you even rent this – you don’t have, like, a licence?’ and I laugh and tell her that I borrowed JP’s.