by Kevin Barry
The vet’s clinic, however, is ignorant of such desperation. It has by force of will and riches wiped it from the hard-drive. The clinic is styled in chrome and blonde wood, there are slate tiles and extravagant leather couches in a reception expertly wardened by a seething goddess of Slavic extraction: a limbre Svetlana. Matronly ladies on the couches nurse trembling small dogs: this time of morning, the vet’s is poodle terrain.
‘Hiya,’ says John Martin. ‘About the dog?’
‘Name, please.’
‘Martin. John Martin.’
‘Dog name!’ spits the ice queen.
‘De Valera.’
She speaks into a headset. Clearance comes through and he is allowed access to the shimmering depths of the building. How the fuck much are vets making these days?
‘Hiya John!’
A headful of tousled locks emerges from a doorway. The vet has a stevedore handshake and millionaire teeth. He is a tan, highlighted guy of maybe sixty five. Dev reclines on a space-age gurney. She wears an expression of sainted pain. She averts her gaze from John Martin. She has the look of a brittle heiress cruelly sectioned in the ripe years.
‘Clearly, yes, it’s a moody little thing we got on our hands,’ says the square-jawed vet, and he flicks at his bleachy flop of hair.
‘I imagine the pregnancy would be…’
‘There are hormonal events, absolutely, but from what I’ve been told, things are cutting a little deeper with Dev. I’ve done bloods, they’ll go for checks, and what can I say? We’ll play wait-see.’
‘And, eh…’
‘Now maybe a lot of this stuff will resolve itself in the very near future.’
‘Once she has the litter?’
‘It should do an amount for her temperament, John, but even so I feel things have got to a stage where I’m going to prescribe an additional treatment. At least for the time being.’
‘Oh?’
‘To be sure to be sure. Belt and braces.’
He presents John Martin with a small white packet containing forty-eight sachets of K-9 Serenity.
‘You sprinkle it on her dinner, just the one a day.’
‘What is it, exactly?’
‘It’s an anti-depressant.’
‘The dog is depressed?’
‘It would seem so, John, yes.’
John Martin settles with glowering Svetlana; cash, as he no longer holds an account at the vet’s. Dev’s treatment costs about the same as a week in France. He is not in a position to grizzle about this, as he has a more pressing concern. De Valera is refusing to walk. He tugs on the leash, but there is venomous resistance. He tugs again, and she yelps. The matrons on the couches mutter. De Valera moans. He drags her across the slate tiles. He bends to pick her up and finds there is an unpredictable amount of spaniel to deal with, and the thought of the litter inside is queasy. On the street, she snarls at him. He has to hold her at arm’s length to prevent blood being drawn. He puts her down on the pavement with more force than is necessary.
‘For fucksake, Dev! Behave!’
An assault of fresh rain is carried slant-wise from the west. A tuneless brass band strikes up inside. Nervous agitation works like water on stone. It is a slow, steady dripping that can meet no answering force. Over time, it washes everything away.
With De Valera livid in the passenger seat, John Martin drives out the far side of the town. He stops at Lidl and pops in for some German condoms. There is a twilight beach scene on the pack: a big blonde couple, arm in arm, up to their eyeballs in it by a dusk-marooned sea.
The town recedes in the rear-view mirror. He pulls onto the bare, desolate stretch of L_______ Road. He parks at the usual place. He is about to set off when Dev begins to rave and foam again. The dog might be heard, might draw prying eyes to this quiet place. He rips open two sachets of K-9 Serenity and sprinkles them on the floor in back—it is a greyish mica dust, and De Valera is drawn to it like love.
John Martin slips away, and cuts across by Tobin’s field. He feels a familiar guilt—not two weeks previously, he had dosed also his daughter.
It was a Saturday evening, at the hotel bar. It was the usual run of things.
You’d do a few bits in town, and then hit back to D_____’s Hotel for a feed of drink. All the other couples would be around, all the old familiars. John and Mary Martin fell in as always with Frank and Madge Howe. Frank had been making cracks about it for months. He said they’ll be talking, John, they’ll be asking questions, mark my words. Who’s with who, they’ll say. He had brought it up, again and again, and it seemed less jokey each time. Then he took John Martin aside in the gents.
‘What about it?’ he said. ‘Grown adults so we are?’
John Martin blushed, and chuckled, but Howe continued.
‘No objections on our side,’ he said. ‘Sure yez could come on up after?’
John Martin tried to laugh it off but there was a tension. In the lounge, he told Mary, and she smiled and said:
‘Arra. They’re lively at least.’
‘I don’t think he’s messing any more, Mary. I think he’s full in earnest.’
‘Sure what harm in it?’ she said.
Then they were back in the front room of the terrace house the Howes were renting. Curry boxes everywhere, vodka and beer. Frank was messing with the stereo and singing along, red in the face. Madge and Mary were skitting and whispering. Frank went up the stairs and came back down with a huge pile of sports jackets in bright colours.
‘My new line,’ he said, ‘they’re selling like hot dogs so they are.’
‘Cakes,’ said John Martin. ‘Hot cakes.’
‘Will you do a spot of modelling for me, Johnnie boy?’
And the two of them paraded up and down, in the jackets, and pushed the sleeves up, play-acting.
‘Crockett and Tubbs!’ roared Madge.
And ‘The Best of The Eagles’ was put on and they all danced and Frank said, what about it, Tubbs?
Then it blurred, and Frank and Mary walked out of the living room.
‘Come on, John,’ said Madge, and she grabbed the car keys, ‘we’ll head for yours.’
You imagine the whole wife-swapping business would take four decisions but really it only takes three.
He moves across the low dip of the bottom fields, rat-faced with need and longing. His long arms swing with intent, one then the other in slow pendulum. He mutters onto his breath as he walks. He climbs over the fence and onto the Flaherty land. An old horse they keep, spared the knackers out of sentiment, regards him with due suspicion, with a knowingness, and returns to its cud with patent disgust. The Flaherty house arises, and he squints towards the yard to make sure there is no Rover jeep there. Lit with nerves and excitement, priapic in the sour light of noon, he approaches the kitchen window, and taps, and she comes to it at once. He blows a fog onto the pane. She unlatches the door, with a scowl, and he steps inside, with a quick squint over his shoulder, and he goes for her.
‘Back off!’ she says.
‘What are you talking about, Noreen? You told me come!’
The long arms swing out, beseeching.
‘I made a mistake. You can take off from here now and don’t mind the old shite talk. He’s only gone in for diesel.’
‘Don’t be telling lies! You wouldn’t have told me come if it was diesel. I have yokes.’
He shows the condom packet.
‘You come around here sniffing like a mutt!’ she hisses, and begins to cry. ‘I made the mistake before, I won’t make it again! Out!’
‘An hour ago, Noreen! Park by the L_______ Road, you said. Cut across by Tobin’s field. Am I making this up?’
‘You’re under stress, John. This isn’t the answer! Just go, okay?’
‘I see,’ he says, ‘I see what you’re trying to do here. You’re trying to turn it back on me. You’re…’
The Rover jeep pulls into the yard. Noreen freezes, then goes into convulsions, her breath rolls through her system
in heavy gulps, and she grips the fridge to keep the feet beneath her. John Martin almost smiles: ah not this old dance again. From the window, he can see big Jim Flaherty pounding across the yard. This Flaherty is no gentle giant. He is carrot-topped, with a hair-trigger temper, and a specific distaste for John Martin on account of a previous situation involving lambs. Now he fills the kitchen door. Now he lays his eyes on John Martin.
‘Jim! The very man. I was only in looking for you. What I wanted to know, Jim, was had you the loan of a wire-cutters? I’ve only an auld bevel-edge below, no use at all for the job at hand. It’s a new boundary I’m putting up for the chickens, give them some bit of a run at least. They’d reef themselves if I went at it with the bevel-edge. What I’d need would be a semi-flush. Of course it’s a last-minute job, as usual. I have herself from the O.C.B. coming around to me. Today, would you believe, and I’m still at it. So would you ah… would you ah… The last minute man! Dancing with the devil in the pale moonlight.’
‘God, John, a semi-flush? I don’t know. I… don’t think so. No, John, no. I’m afraid not. Apologies. Nothing I can do to help you out there. Have you thought of Mangan, or Troy?’
‘True, I suppose, I could nearly ah… I could nearly… I could knock in, I suppose?’
‘You could, John. Especially given they’d be five miles nearer to you. Given they’d be neighbours.’
‘I ah…’
‘And tell me, by the way, while we’re at it,’ and Jim Flaherty takes a dainty step back, a little dancing step back, and he blocks off the door with an arm to the jamb, an arm with the reach of a mid-sized crane. ‘Tell me, John. Where you parked?’
‘Oh, I ah… I left it down by L_______ Road. Actually.’
‘I see. You decided to park twelve hundred yards away. At a spot that is hidden from the open view. I see.’
‘Listen, anyway, folks, I’ll knock away out of it. I’ll see ye.’
‘I’ll tell you now, John, we can do it easy or we can do it hard. Which way would you want it to be?’
‘Easy.’
‘Good man. So how long have you been sleeping with my wife?’
‘Jimmy!’ she cries. ‘This is crazy talk!’
‘Noreen, love, would you ever go upstairs and lock yourself into the bathroom and put the key out under the door for me? I’ll deal with you in due course. John, you might take a seat by the fireplace, please.’
Noreen trots for the stairs. John Martin sits down on a straight-backed chair. Jim Flaherty takes a length of rope from beneath the sink. He comes across the floor, smiling softly in a pair of well-pressed denims.
‘I was wondering all along who it was,’ he says, ‘but you know I never once thought it’d be a Clare man! Then again, you’re nearly always surprised at what looks up at you out of the trap.’
He winds the rope gently but firmly around John Martin’s thin waist, around and around, and he knots it quickly and precisely. He takes a clean, ironed tea towel from a drawer and presents it to the bound farmer.
‘I want you to use this as a gag, John,’ he says. ‘It’ll stop you swallowing your tongue.’
‘And what, am… what am… precisely?’
‘What I’m going to do, John, is I’m going to dislocate your shoulder. It’ll give you something to remember the day by.’
Sometimes, in the slow drag of winter, terrible sounds will pierce the calm of the midlands air, and we look up, and our brows gather in knit nervous folds, but we persuade ourselves that it is otherwise, that these are not the cries of humankind. But we know! In our hearts, we know.
John Martin comes back across the bottom fields, walks with a drop-shouldered jerk, and he’s had thumps in the mouth as well, and they took teeth with them. Oh the terrible spittle of revenge that formed on the grey lips of big weeping Jim Flaherty! But he must leave it go. The woman from the O.C.B. is due ten minutes since. He gets back to the 4x4. De Valera is gone apeshit on the K-9 Serenity.
‘I swear to God to you, John, I didn’t! Not at all. Not even close.’
‘How many times, Mary?’
Half eleven in the morning, the Sunday after the Saturday, and she stood there, and she lied to him! He was sat in the kitchen trying to eat a sausage sandwich. And there is no bite to eat he likes better in the week than the sausage sandwich of a Sunday morning. And he couldn’t eat it.
‘No, honest to Jesus,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t the same. It was just… different. All I wanted was to be back at our usual auld thing. Never again!’
He tried to believe her. He gripped himself inside and squeezed hard, and he felt a little better. He took a bite out of the sausage sandwich, chewed it, remorsefully, and shook another lash of brown sauce into it. He was man and boy a martyr to the brown sauce. His head wouldn’t let him be.
‘I’ll ask you again,’ he said. ‘Did you come, Mary?’
He does not believe that his wife is a malicious woman. He is no fool and he knows that there are women who have malicious streaks. His mother, now, was a malicious woman, you could even say an evil woman. He would never forget the night he went into her room after she’d unbeknownst to him been with O’Donnell and the way she was lying on her stomach and the way she turned around to him and the way she kind of… writhed, is the only word, like a serpent, and the look that was on her face. Pure hate. But Mary, no, he didn’t think she had that streak in her.
He had to believe her, somehow. There were walls in the house painted more often than Mary came, and he wanted to be sure it was her, not him.
He didn’t know how he finished that sausage sandwich but by Jesus he finished it. Then he went out to the chickens. He walked through the yard. A Sunday, and he gave an impression of slitheriness, like a stoat.
Driving a 4x4 with a dislocated shoulder is no picnic, not when the white sear of the pain waters your eyes and blurs your vision. But it is nothing at all compared to driving a 4x4 with a dislocated shoulder while a manic-depressive spaniel, in manic phase, answerable only to the tides of the moon, makes repeated assaults upon the area of your crotch. Blood streaming down his face, raging against it all, tears streaming from the sheer physical agony, spitting teeth—it is in this state that John Martin pulls into the yard of Meadowsweet Farm. He is awaited there by his wife, and by the woman from the O.C.B.
Mary comes running.
‘Oh Jesus!’ she cries. ‘Oh Christ! Oh Dev! Are you okay?’
‘Hello there!’ calls John Martin, and staggers from the jeep, and falls to his knees. ‘I’m afraid I got caught up in the town. I’d a bit of am… a bit of an auld am… whatchacallit.’
The woman from the O.C.B., a tall, thin matron in a green wax jacket, takes a couple of nervous steps back.
‘Bastard!’ cries Mary Martin, and she runs screaming to the house, with the small howling dog in her arms.
The worst of it was that he had crushed two Valium into hot milk and then poured it into his crying child to conk her out. It was Madge’s idea, and they were her tablets, but what kind of a father would do that? And for what turned out to be a five-minute special. And Madge lay there, for the rest of the night, yapping nonsense out of her, smoking her fags.
‘That young miss will sleep now sweet as a dream for you, John, you have nothing to worry about there. These are the English Valium, you see, these are the Valium we used get all along. Until they starts making them below in Clonmel. Clonmel! They’re not the same at all and I’m not the only one that’s saying it. Honest to God, John, you might as well be eating Smarties. But I have an arrangement about the English Valiums with the man in the chemist, the man of the McCaffertys. Have you ever noticed, John, the way every single last one of the McCaffertys has the big teeth?’
He had never put down a night like it.
He came from a town himself, it wasn’t as if he had background in poultry management. It was not a pleasant setup, not by any stretch, not when a smother of them would go on you, all the disease. There was a young fella in town wore one of th
e long coats with the badges and he was forever buttonholing John Martin with rants about cruelty. What about the quality of life, he’d say, getting himself all worked up. What about my quality of life, said John Martin. Do you think I’m outside in a palace?
The poultry shed was bad now. It was bad. But he had mixed feelings about the poultry shed. He had mixed feelings because it was the one place his daughter was calm, it was the one place she never cried out or skittered. She would pull at him to take her there and he’d go. She’d sit there on a pail in her red coat and it was like she was in a chapel.
He couldn’t get it out of his mind all the following week. Slugging around the place, trying to look after chickens, and it haunting him. First thing in the morning, last thing at night. Madge was handsome but crazy, and he didn’t need any more distractions. There was already the situation with Noreen. There was also the situation with Kelli Carmody at the sports centre, though that was most definitely over. Kelli was nineteen, for Christ’s sake, and they are unpredictable as snakes at that age. He had changed the hours of his workouts to avoid her, and he fully intended to continue doing so. There is only so much a man’s heart can take. He was still getting over Jenna. He knew whenever he saw her at the till in Lidl that he wasn’t fully over her yet. And Yvonne, too, Yvonne Troy was a heartbreaker. So no, there would be no more messing, there would be no situation with Madge. Even if she did have legs that went up to Armagh.
The woman from the O.C.B. is polite but firm.
‘No way, John. I mean, seriously,’ and she half laughs. ‘You’re not even in the ballpark here. We have to maintain standards, you know?’
‘I realise,’ he says, through gritted teeth, because the pain is if anything increasing, ‘that there needs to be an improvement in the poultry shed.’
The woman from the O.C.B. climbs into her jeep. She sits for a moment with her feet held out the door, and yanks off her Wellingtons, one then the other, and flexes her toes in the stockinged feet, then reaches in for the driving shoes. A slight colour comes into her cheeks from the exertion of this.