Robert Cremins
In the early summer of 1985, graffiti written in a stylish script began appearing inside the 46A, Dublin’s most bourgeois bus route. They were red-marker promotions for a band named Above the Glove. An imaginary band—I read Rockall magazine every week, cover to classifieds, and knew what was real in music. Through June and July, AtG went from strength to ironic strength. They released a limited-edition gatefold single. They did a photoshoot on top of the Central Bank. They toured: Au Boeuf de Glöf—now gigging Paris.
*
I was not gigging Paris. I was working in Dún Laoghaire, at Kingstown Burgers. It was my first summer job. Ten, twelve times a week I was on the 46A, scanning its shiny walls and seat-backs for news of my favorite band, Above the Glove, that meteor of pretension.
At work I was in charge of fries. I put down so many baskets in the glunky boiling oil that one night my parents, woken by odd sounds, discovered me sleep-working in my bedroom, the light on. I was standing at my desk, chair flung aside, frying imaginary baskets. Astonished, amused, they put me back to bed.
*
Then in August, terrible news. It was written in black ink downstairs. Above the Glove split—musical différances. I wasn’t sure I got the joke entirely, but of this I was sure: There was a genius in my generation.
We went on holiday to Spiddal, as we always did. While the rest of the family went into the sea, I sat on the rocks, writing cod lyrics in a cheap notebook. Just before we drove back to Dublin I threw it in the nettles.
*
School started. My Leaving Certificate year at Canisius. While our fellow sixth-years went off to Pass Irish, Honors Biology, Applied Mathematics, Timothy “the Suss” Sheridan and I stayed in the cottage, drinking instant coffee, talking about the Velvet Underground. I turned the conversation toward Above the Glove. Suss said he’d heard that the graffiti was the work of a girl from Trinity.
The next day I bunked off at lunchtime and took a bus into town. I wondered how she’d transform the upper deck of this 11B with her wit and style. From the Nassau Street entrance I went into the Arts Block, and was immediately stopped by a porter so old he looked as if he might have had words with Samuel Beckett.
“Are yeh a student here?” he asked, hands clasped behind his back.
“No,” I answered, pretending to be American, “I’m looking for the Book of Kells.”
In detention I told the Suss about my failed mission to Trinity.
“Actually,” he said, “I think it might have been NCAD.”
*
Both of my parents worked at the Eye and Ear, my mother as a nurse, my father as an administrator. They had dreamed of me becoming an Ear, Nose, and Throat man. On the CAO form I put down as my first choice Mental and Moral Science.
*
As I came downstairs, I could hear the radio on in the kitchen: my father listening to Sunday Miscellany. An older woman with a throaty voice mentioned my band. I froze on the lower steps, but the piece was over. Cello music.
I rushed into the kitchen.
“Dad, why was that woman talking about Above the Glove?”
He put down his cup of tea. “Above the what?”
“Glove.”
“No gloves, son. She was talking about Baggot Street in the fifties.”
“Of course she was,” I replied as I turned away.
*
Searching. I walked through Temple Bar, along the quays, twice around the Black Church. I examined the Casino at Marino and the Obelisk on Killiney Hill. Paced the piers, scouted the Liberties. Looked in crepuscular pubs and disused railway stations. Stoneybatter, Clondalkin, Dolphin’s Barn became as familiar to me as Merrion and Belfield. Thus I got to know my city. And her, not at all. Of her, there was no sign. All the graffiti I saw was gray.
*
One morning in March I woke to an early alarm I had set so that I could study genetics; the Mocks began in less than a fortnight and I had done hardly any revision. Sitting at my desk, I turned on the lamp. The pale wooden desktop was covered in graffiti. Above the Glove, Above the Glove, Above the Glove.
*
I drank Black Russians and wore black boots. One afternoon close to Easter I was sitting on a bench in Fitzwilliam Square staring at those boots when a gang of teenaged girls ran past me in a whooping blur. The last girl snatched the fisherman’s hat from my ragged head. I yelped in protest. Stenciled on the back of her denim jacket were the letters AtG. I gave chase—through a tunnel of greenery, out the south gate. The gang had disappeared. The tall houses opposite hid what they knew behind their elaborate fanlights.
*
June. The Leaving Certificate. Between the first and second English papers, the Suss told me that W.B. Yeats had said that his unrequited love for Maud Gonne was the most fecund ditch of all. We’d seen a picture of Maud Gonne in our history book and been disappointed. But this was good. The most fecund ditch of all. Walking down the avenue to lunch at the Hey Presto! Grill and walking back up the avenue from lunch at the Hey Presto! Grill, I cherished that description like a cog note.
Yeats didn’t come up. For ten minutes I covered the exam with the AtG insignia. The invigilator gave me a look. So I took a stab at Austin Clarke.
*
After the Leaving came the Matric. I stopped answering questions.
*
August again. This year I stayed in Dublin while the rest of the family went off to Spiddal. With the money I was saving from working a second summer at Kingstown Burgers—I was now in charge of the grill—I would go Interrailing with the Suss in September, unless I had to repeat my Leaving.
At Teevan’s, the local newsagents, there were two publications on order under our family’s name—The Irish Times and Rockall magazine. On the morning of the Place Offers I picked up both.
“Big day,” said big Mr. Teevan, handing over the bulk of paper. “I’ll say a prayer for you.”
“Thank you,” I muttered.
At the 46A bus stop, I threw The Irish Times in the bin. Opening up Rockall, I prayed for news of a reunion.
Robert Cremins is the author of the novels A Sort of Homecoming and Send in the Devils. Recent fiction has appeared in The Manchester Review and The Dublin Review, recent non-fiction in The Los Angeles Review of Books. He teaches in the Honors College at the University of Houston.