New Irish Short Stories

by Joseph O'Connor

  Everett showed a palm.

  ‘Nothin’ personal in this, lad,’ he said.

  ‘I know that, Ev.’

  Ale Club outings were civilised events. They never got aggressive. Maudlin, yes, but never aggressive. Rhoson-Sea, the Penrhyn sands. We knew Everett had been through a hard time. His old dad passed on, and there’d been sticky business with the will. Ev would turn a mournful eye on us, at the bar of the Lion, in the snug of the Ship, and he’d say:

  ‘My brother got the house, my sister got the money, I got the manic depression.’

  Black as his moods could be, as sharp as his tongue, Everett was tender. Train came around Little Ormes Head, and Billy Stroud went off on one about Ceauşescu.

  ‘Longer it recedes in the mind’s eye,’ he said, ‘the more like Romania seems the critical moment.’

  ‘Apropos of, Bill?’

  ‘Apropos my arse. As for Liverpool? Myth was piled upon myth, wasn’t it? They said Labour sent out termination notices to council workers by taxi. Never bloody happened! It was an anti-red smear!’

  ‘Thatcher’s sick and old, Billy,’ said John Mosely.

  ‘Aye an’ her spawn’s all around us yet,’ said Billy, and he broke into a broad smile, his humours mysteriously righted, his fun returned.

  Looming, then, the shadow of Great Ormes Head, and, beneath it, a crescent swathe of bay, a beach, a prom, and terraces: here lay Llandudno.

  ‘1.55 p.m.,’ said Everett. ‘On the nose.’

  ‘Where’s our exotic dancer?’ teased Mo.

  Billy Stroud sadly raised his T-shirt above his man boobs. He put his arms above his head and gyrated slowly his vast belly and danced his way off the train. We lost weight in tears as we tumbled onto the platform.

  ‘How much for a private session, miss?’ called Tom N.

  ‘Tenner for twenty minutes,’ said Billy. ‘Fiver, I’ll stay the full half hour.’

  We walked out of Llandudno station and plumb into a headbutt of heat.

  ‘Blood and tar!’ I cried. ‘We’ll be hittin’ the lagers!’

  ‘Wash your mouth out with soap and water,’ said John Mosely.

  Big John rubbed his hands together and led the way – Big John was first over the top. He reminded us there was business to hand.

  ‘We’re going to need a decision,’ he said, ‘about the National Beer Scoring System.’

  Here was kerfuffle. The NBSS, by long tradition, ranked a beer from nought to five. Nought was take-backable, a crime against the name of ale. One was barely drinkable, two so-so, three an eyebrow raised in mild appreciation. A four was an ale on top form, a good beer in proud nick. A five was angel’s tears but a seasoned drinker would rarely dish out a five, would over the course of a lifetime’s quaffing call no more than a handful of fives. Such was the NBSS, as was. However, Real Ale Club, Merseyside branch, had for some time felt that the system lacked subtlety. And one famous night, down Rigby’s, we came up with our own system: we marked from nought to ten. Finer gradations of purity were thus allowed for. The nuances of a beer were more properly considered. A certain hoppy tang, redolent of summer hedgerows, might elevate a brew from a seven to an eight. The mellow back note born of a good oak casking might lift an ale again, and to the rare peaks of the nines. Billy Stroud had argued for decimal breakdown, for seven-point-fives and eight-point-fives – Billy would – but we had to draw a line somewhere. The national organisation responded badly. They sent stiff word down the email but we continued to forward our beer reports with markings on a nought-to-ten scale. There was talk now of us losing the charter. These were heady days.

  ‘Stuff them is my view,’ said Everett Bell.

  ‘We’d lose a lot if we lost the charter,’ said Mo. ‘Think about the festival invites. Think about the history of the branch.’

  ‘Think about the bloody future!’ cried Tom N. ‘We haven’t come up with a new system to be awkward. We’ve done it for the ale drinkers. We’ve done it for the ale makers!’

  I felt a lump in my throat, and I daresay I wasn’t alone.

  ‘Ours is the better system,’ said Everett. ‘This much we know.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said John Mosely, and this was the clincher – Big John’s call. ‘I say we score nought to ten.’

  ‘If you lot are in, that’s good enough for me,’ I said.

  Six stout men linked arms on a hot Llandudno pavement. We rounded the turn onto the prom and our first port of call: the Heron Inn.

  Which turned out to be an anticlimax. A nice house, lately refurbished, but mostly keg rubbish on the taps. The Heron did, however, do a Phoenix Tram Driver on cask, 3.8 per cent, and we sat with six of same.

  ‘I’ve had better Tram Drivers,’ opened Mo.

  ‘I’ve had worse,’ countered Tom N.

  ‘She has a nice delivery but I’d worry about her legs,’ said Billy Stroud, shrewdly.

  ‘You wouldn’t be having more than a couple,’ said John Mosely.

  ‘Not a skinful beer,’ I concurred.

  All eyes turned to Everett Bell. He held a hand aloft, wavered it.

  ‘A five would be generous, a six insane,’ he said.

  ‘Give her the five,’ said Big John, dismissively.

  I made the note. This was as smoothly as a beer was ever scored. There had been some world-historical ructions in our day. There was the time Billy Stroud and Mo hadn’t talked for a month over an eight handed out to a Belhaven Bombardier.

  Alewards we followed our noses. We walked by the throng of the beach and made towards the Prom View Hotel. We’d had word of a new landlord there, an ale fancier. The shrieks of the sun-crazed kids made our stomachs loop. It was dogs-dying-in-parked-cars weather. The Prom View’s ample lounge was a blessed reprieve. We had the place to ourselves, the rest of Llandudno apparently being content with summer, sea and life. John Mosely nodded towards a smashing row of hand pumps for the casks. Low whistles sounded. The landlord, hot-faced and jovial, came through from the hotel’s reception.

  ‘Another tactic,’ he said, ‘would be stay home and have a nice sauna.’

  ‘Same difference,’ sighed John Mosely.

  ‘They’re saying 37.2 now,’ said the landlord, taking a flop of sweat from his brow.

  Billy Stroud sensed a kindred spirit: ‘Gone up again, has it?’

  ‘And up,’ said the landlord. ‘My money’s on a 38 before we’re out.’

  ‘Record won’t go,’ said Billy.

  ‘Nobody’s said record,’ said the landlord. ‘We’re not going to see a 38.5, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Brogdale in Kent,’ said Billy. ‘August 10th, 2003.’

  ‘2.05 p.m.,’ said the landlord. ‘I wasn’t five miles distant that same day.’

  Billy was beaten.

  ‘Loading a van for a divorced sister,’ said the landlord, ramming home his advantage. ‘Lugging sofas in the pig-gin’ heat. And wardrobes!’

  We bowed our heads to the man.

  ‘What’ll I fetch you, gents?’

  A round of Cornish Lightning was requested.

  ‘Taking the sun?’ enquired the landlord.

  ‘Taking the ale.’

  ‘After me own heart,’ he said. ‘Course round here, it’s lagers they’re after mostly. Bloody Welsh.’

  ‘Can’t beat sense into them,’ said John Mosely.

  ‘If I could, I would,’ said the landlord, and he danced as a young featherweight might, raising his clammy dukes. Then he skipped and turned.

  ‘I’ll pop along on my errands, boys,’ he said. ‘There are rows to hoe and socks for the wash. You’d go through pair after pair this weather.’

  He pinched his nostrils closed: what-a-pong.

  ‘Soon as you’re ready for more, ring that bell, and my good wife will oblige. So adieu, adieu …’

  He skipped away. We raised eyes. The shade of the lounge was pleasant, the Cornish Lightning in decent nick.

  ‘Call it a six?’ said Tom N.

  Nerveless
ly we agreed. Talk was limited. We swallowed hungrily, quickly, and peered again towards the pumps.

  ‘The Lancaster Bomber?’

  ‘The Whitstable Mule?’

  ‘How’s about that Mangan’s Organic?’

  ‘I’d say the Lancaster all told.’

  ‘Ring the bell, Everett.’

  He did so, and a lively blonde, familiar with her forties but nicely preserved, bounced through from reception. Our eyes went shyly down. She took a glass to shine as she waited our call. Type of lass who needs her hands occupied.

  ‘Do you for, gents?’

  Irish, her accent.

  ‘Round of the Lancaster, wasn’t it?’ said Everett.

  She squinted towards our table, counted the heads.

  ‘Times six,’ confirmed Everett.

  The landlady squinted harder. She dropped the glass. It smashed to pieces on the floor.

  ‘Maurice?’ she said.

  It was Mo that froze, stared, softened.

  ‘B-B-Barbara?’ he said.

  We watched as he rose and crossed to the bar. A man in a dream was Mo. We held our breaths as Mo and Barbara took each other’s hands over the counter. They were wordless for some moments, and then felt ten eyes on them, for they giggled, and Barbara set blushing to the Lancasters. She must have spilled half again down the slops gully as she poured. I joined Everett to carry the ales to our table. Mo and Barbara went into a huddle down the far end of the counter. They were rapt.

  Real Ale Club would not have marked Mo for a romancer.

  ‘The quiet ones you watch,’ said Tom N. ‘Maurice?’

  ‘Mo? With a piece?’ whispered Everett Bell.

  ‘Could be they’re old family friends?’ tried innocent Billy. ‘Or relations?’

  Barbara was now slowly stroking Mo’s wrist.

  ‘Four buggerin’ fishwives I’m sat with,’ said John Mosely. ‘What are we to make of these Lancasters?’

  We talked ale but were distracted. Our glances cut down the length of the bar. Mo and Barbara talked lowly, quickly, excitedly there. She was moved by Mo, we could see that plain enough. Again and again she ran her fingers through her hair. Mo was gazing at her, all dreamy, and suddenly he’d got a thumb hooked in the belt loop of his denims – Mr Suave. He didn’t so much as touch his ale.

  Next, of course, the jaunty landlord arrived back on the scene.

  ‘Oh Alvie!’ she cried. ‘You’ll never guess!’

  ‘Oh?’ said the landlord, all the jauntiness instantly gone from him.

  ‘This is Maurice!’

  ‘Maurice?’ he said. ‘You’re joking …’

  It was polite handshakes then, and feigned interest in Mo on the landlord’s part, and a wee fat hand he slipped around the small of his wife’s back.

  ‘We’ll be suppin’ up,’ said John Mosely, sternly.

  Mo had a last, whispered word with Barbara but her smile was fixed now, and the landlord remained in close attendance. As we left, Mo looked back and raised his voice a note too loud. Desperate, he was.

  ‘Barbara?’

  We dragged him along. We’d had word of notable pork scratchings up the Mangy Otter.

  ‘Do tell, Maurice,’ said Tom N.

  ‘Leave him be,’ said John Mosely.

  ‘An ex, that’s all,’ said Mo.

  And Llandudno was infernal. Families raged in the heat. All of the kids wept. The Otter was busyish when we sludged in. We settled on a round of St Austell Tributes from a meagre selection. Word had not been wrong on the quality of the scratchings. And the St Austell turned out to be in top form.

  ‘I’d be thinking in terms of a seven,’ said Everett Bell.

  ‘Or a shade past that?’ said John Mosely.

  ‘You could be right on higher than sevens,’ said Billy Stroud. ‘But surely we’re not calling it an eight?’

  ‘Here we go,’ I said.

  ‘Now this,’ said Billy Stroud, ‘is where your seven-point-five would come in.’

  ‘We’ve heard this song, Billy,’ said John Mosely.

  ‘He may not be wrong, John,’ said Everett.

  ‘Give him a seven-point-five,’ said John Mosely, ‘and he’ll be wanting his six-point-threes, his eight-point-sixes. There’d be no bloody end to it!’

  ‘Tell you what,’ said Mo. ‘How about I catch up with you all a bit later? Where’s next on list?’

  We stared at the carpet. It had diamonds on and crisps ground into it.

  ‘Next up is the Crippled Ox on Burton Square,’ I read from my print-out. ‘Then it’s Henderson’s on Old Parade.’

  ‘See you at one or the other,’ said Mo.

  He threw back the dregs of his St Austell and was gone.

  We decided on another at the Otter. There was a Whitstable Silver Star, 6.2 per cent to volume, a regular stingo to settle our nerves.

  ‘What’s the best you’ve ever had?’ asked Tom N.

  It’s a conversation that comes up again and again but it was a lifesaver just then: it took our minds off Mo.

  ‘Put a gun to my head,’ said Big John, ‘and I don’t think I could look past the draught Bass I had with me dad in Peter Kavanagh’s. Sixteen years of age, Friday teatime, first wage slip in my arse pocket.’

  ‘But was it the beer or the occasion, John?’

  ‘How can you separate the two?’ he said, and we all sighed.

  ‘For depth? Legs? Back note?’ said Everett Bell. ‘I’d do well to ever best the Swain’s Anthem I downed a November Tuesday in Stockton-on-Tees, 19 and 87. 4.2 per cent to volume. I was still in haulage at that time.’

  ‘I’ve had an Anthem,’ said Billy Stroud of this famously hard-to-find brew, ‘and I’d have to say I found it an unexceptional ale.’

  Everett made a face.

  ‘So what’d be your all-time, Billy?’

  The ex-Marxist knit his fingers atop the happy mound of his belly.

  ‘Ridiculous question,’ he said. ‘There is so much wonderful ale on this island. How is a sane man to separate a Pelham High Anglican from a Warburton’s Saxon Fiend? And we haven’t even mentioned the great Belgian tradition. Your Duvel’s hardly a dishwater. Then there’s the Czechs, the Poles, the Germans …’

  ‘Gassy pop!’ cried Big John, no fan of a German brew, of a German anything.

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Billy. ‘A Paulaner Weissbier is a sensational sup on its day.’

  ‘Where’d you think Mo’s headed?’ Tom N. cut in.

  Everett groaned, ‘He’ll be away down the Prom View, won’t he? Big ape.’

  ‘Mo a ladykiller?’ said Tom. ‘There’s one for breaking news.’

  ‘No harm if it meant he smartened himself up a bit,’ said John.

  ‘He has let himself go,’ said Billy. ‘Since the testicle.’

  ‘You’d plant spuds in those ears,’ I said.

  The Whitstables had us in fighting form. We were away up the Crippled Ox. We found there a Miner’s Slattern on cask. TV news showed sardine beaches and motorway chaos. There was an internet machine on the wall, a pound for ten minutes, and Billy Stroud went to consult the meteorological satellites. The Slattern set me pensive.

  Strange, I thought, how I myself had wound up a Real Ale Club stalwart. October 1995, I’d found myself in motorway services outside Ormskirk having a screaming barny with the missus. We were moving back to her folks’ place in Northern Ireland. From dratted Leicester. We were heading for the ferry at Stranraer. At services, missus told me I was an idle lardarse who had made her life hell and she never wanted to see me again. We’d only stopped off to fill the tyres. She gets in, slams the door, puts her foot down. Give her ten minutes, I thought, she’ll calm down and turn back for me. Two hours later, I’m sat in an empty Chinese in services, weeping and eating Szechuan beef. I call a taxi. Taxi comes. I says, where are we, exactly? Bloke looks at me. He says, Ormskirk direction. I says, what’s nearest city of any size? Drop you in Liverpool for twenty quid, he says. He leaves me off downtown, and I lo
ok for a pub. Spot the Ship and Mitre, and in I go. I find a stunning row of pumps. I call a Beaver Mild out of Devon.

  ‘I wouldn’t,’ says a bloke with a beard down the bar.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Try a Marston’s Old Familiar,’ he says, and it turns out he’s Billy Stroud.

  The same Billy turned from the internet machine at the Ox in Llandudno.

  ‘37.9,’ he said. ‘Bristol Airport, a shade after three. Flights delayed, tarmac melting.’

  ‘Pig heat,’ said Tom N.

  ‘We won’t suffer much longer,’ said Billy. ‘There’s a change due.’

  ‘Might get a night’s sleep,’ said Everett.

  The hot nights were certainly a torment. Lying there with a sheet stuck to your belly. Thoughts coming loose, beer fumes rising, a manky arse. The city beyond the flat throbbing with summer. Usually I’d get up and have a cup of tea, watch some telly. Astrophysics on Beeb Two at four in the morning, news from the galaxies, and light already in the eastern sky. I’d dial the number in Northern Ireland and then hang up before they could answer.

  Mo arrived into the Ox like the ghost of Banquo. There were terrible scratch marks down his left cheek.

  ‘A Slattern will set you right, kid,’ said John Mosely, discreetly, and he manoeuvred his big bones barwards.

  Poor Mo was wordless as he stared into the ale that was put before him. Billy Stroud sneaked a time-out signal to Big John.

  ‘We’d nearly give Henderson’s a miss,’ agreed John.

  ‘As well get back to known terrain,’ said Everett.

  We climbed the hot streets towards the station. We stocked up with some Cumberland Pedigrees, 3.4 per cent to volume, always an easeful drop. The train was busy with daytrippers heading back. We sipped quietly. Mo looked half-dead as he slumped there but now and then he’d come up for a mouthful of his Pedigree.

  ‘How’s it tasting, kiddo?’ chanced Everett.

  ‘Like a ten,’ said Mo, and we all laughed.

  The flicker of his old humour reassured us. The sun descended on Colwyn Bay, and there was young life every where. I’d only spoken to her once since Ormskirk. We had details to finalise, and she was happy to let it slip about her new bloke. Some twat called Stan.