Ceilidh Dance Part Two

All except Dante. Taliesin Macbeth would tell anyone prepared to listen that the conception of his only son had taken place on a midsummer evening when two star crossed lovers consummated their passion whilst riding the astral plains. In reality Dante had been the product of a Whisky fuelled knee trembler by the bins of The Four Horsemen, with Carol who worked behind the bar on Fridays. Presumably a similar alcoholic haze had been responsible for the name Dante, on its own bad enough, combined with the surname Macbeth an almost crippling handicap to begin life with. Dante didn’t go to the grammar school, Dante was “Schooled at home” which early on in their relationship Connor discovered meant he was allowed to do what he wanted, seemingly without consequence, and had the run of his fathers vast house “Poets Lodge”. He also had access to Taliesin’s impressive collection of high class European pornography. Adversity makes strange bedfellows, and Connor and Dante, the only two boys in the whole of Drumcrag not to go to the grammar school soon became fast friends. This alliance was further cemented by Connors mother absolutely forbidding Connor to have anything to do with Dante. Like Connor, Dante was still in Drumcrag, the only two not to have left. They would both stand at the bar in the Four Horsemen and watch the next generation of Children preparing to leave, and just at the point Connor would be about to scream at the insanity of it all, Dante would twinkle and buy him another drink and it would all seem not quite so bad, and then Connor would roll back to his parents house, back to his small room with the bed he had slept in since he was three and the action man wallpaper that had never been changed. Back to the disapproving look of his mother and the quiet silence from his father and he would crash out in his clothes and dream of passing his eleven plus and wake up still in his clothes with a mouth like a camels arse.