There Are Little Kingdoms

by Kevin Barry

  This was as close as the village got to an attraction. The village was an unimpressive tangle of a dozen streets. There was a main street and a square, one as drab as the other, and a woeful few streets subsidiary to these. There was an insignificant river, brown and slow, and granite hills beyond—these, it was said, gave the place a scenic charm but in truth, it was forlorn. The people were terraced in neat rows and roofed in with grey slates and were themselves forlorn, but they wouldn’t easily have said why.

  Delahunty—his remaining senses sharpened—wasn’t crazy about the way things were shaping up. Sometimes, on these quiet evenings, when the streets had emptied out, and the traffic had exhausted itself, and when the twins, Donna and Dee, moved swiftly through his aisles, the eyes of Delahunty rolled up not to search out a price but with suspicion and fear. The blind man could tell bad girls by smell.

  ‘Just having a quick gawk, Mr Delahunty,’ called Dee, the blonde, as she rifled the cooler for sugary drinks.

  ‘Any sign at all of that new Smash Hits?’ called Donna, the brunette, who daily skinned the magazine rack of its gaudier titles.

  ‘No sign yet,’ said Mr Delahunty. ‘Anythin’ else I’d do ye for?’

  In her own good time, Donna sashayed from the aisles and slapped a single packet of mints onto the counter. Her stonewashed jeans were lumpy with swag. Dee, shipping in alongside, was already quietly taking the wrapper off a Lion Bar. They had neck and brass and tongues like lizards.

  ‘Just these so,’ said Donna. ‘The auld bucks is tight.’

  ‘What’s it we have, ladies?’

  ‘Polos,’ said Dee. ‘The mint with the hole in it.’

  Mr Delahunty blushed to a purplish colour, like a winegum, and Donna didn’t even pretend to hide her snigger.

  ‘Breakin’ hearts tonight, I suppose?’ he tried to skip past the blush.

  ‘Isn’t much around this place you’d break ’em off,’ said Donna. ‘But we’re causing damage all the same.’

  ‘Trying the handles of parked cars,’ said Dee.

  ‘Whistling past the graveyard,’ said Donna.

  ‘Haven’t they the lip taken off ye yet below in the Prez?’ asked Delahunty.

  ‘Sure you’d wonder what they’re turning out of that school at all,’ said Donna.

  ‘Eejits,’ said Dee. ‘That place is nothin’ only an eejit factory.’

  ‘Ye’ll be the stone cold end of me,’ said Delahunty. ‘That’s twelve pence, please.’

  Donna put the coins on the table and she let her fingers linger there to playfully tip against the blind man’s reaching ones.

  ‘See ya later, maybe?’ she breathed it, heavily, and Dee made a wet, intimate noise with her painted lips.

  Into the fade of a September evening, the two of them, brazen and sixteen. They were tallish in wedge heels. They were visions in stonewash. The hair was teased out big. There had been long hours of painful backcombing. The sky’s weak glow was the glow of a mean coal fire tamped down with slack—a widower’s fire. They made short work of the haul from Delahunty’s and whirled into a sugar frenzy. Their chatter was so nervous as to edge on violence but it succumbed, after a few turns around the square, to the notes of cheap melody. They hummed an old waltz tune, like one from the fifties films their mother watched in the afternoons—valium and vodka, curtains drawn, big woozy romantic strings—and Donna hooked an arm of Dee’s with a crook of her own, and they spun each other in slow then quickening circles, the footwork was dainty, the heels became a blur, down half the length of the main street they turned. There was a hooded crow on a windowsill. There was a notice for a sale of work pinned upside down in the display case by the grotto. All the parked cars pointed in the same direction.

  They were dizzy and excited, wearing trouble as a scent, and they made for the next light that burned, which was the Yangtzee River, where they had a boyfriend installed: Lawrence Wang, its lone son and heir.

  He was taking orders on the phone. He was feeding orders back to the wordless scowling father in the kitchen. He was keeping one eye trained on the small television ledged above the waiting area, which mutely showed the prices, the tote and the bursts of pelting action from a dog meeting. He watched it through the fag smoke of a Consulate wedged in the corner of his mouth. He kept the phone tucked beneath his chin.

  ‘Chips or fried rice?’ he said, and the door exploded, the bould ones burst in.

  ‘What’s cookin’, Lala?’ enquired Dee, putting bruised elbows and a swell of young chest on the counter before him.

  ‘What’s happenin’, Babycakes?’ enquired Donna, shipping in alongside.

  ‘Half an hour,’ Lawrence Wang told the phone.

  He replaced the receiver. He stubbed out his cigarette. He lit his hardest glare.

  ‘The two of ye can go park it somewhere else now, d’ye hear me?’

  ‘Lala,’ said Dee, ‘would you do us a twirl there and give us a gander at them pert little buns?’

  ‘I never seen a young fella fill a pair of Farahs like it,’ said Donna, and she let her eyes turn in to meet one another.

  Lawrence Wang glanced anxiously over his shoulder. He could rehearse the brush-off all he wanted but he could never bring it out when it was needed.

  ‘Swear to God,’ he whispered, ‘if he catches ye in here again! This is the busy time and I wouldn’t mind but ye were told.’

  ‘Busy alright,’ said Dee, swivelling her gaze around the empty take-away.

  ‘Dancing room only at the Yangtzee River,’ said Donna, and she waltzed herself to the far wall, where the menu was pinned.

  Lawrence looked past them. He gazed with great adolescent suffering into the cold eight o’clock street, to the dwindling terraces across the way, the voodoo hills beyond. The village so quickly ran out of itself: it turned into rough ground, rose to the hills and dark sky. The ground was taking wounds up there. He didn’t need to see Donna and Dee this evening. He had notions himself and they’d only give a charge and impetus to them. He had great self-awareness for a young fella. He knew full well that he was after falling in with a bad crowd—sometimes two is plenty enough to be a crowd.

  ‘Are ye orderin’ something now or are ye coolin’ heels?’ he said.

  Dee raised the back of her hand to her forehead, fluttered her lids and performed an MGM swoon.

  ‘Lawrence,’ she said. ‘There’s a tremendous coldness about you tonight, darling.’

  Donna clutched violently at her abdomen, as though shot, and she slithered down the far wall.

  ‘Oh!’ she cried. ‘Oh what a sublime corpse!’

  ‘Jesus, can’t ye keep quiet? He’ll be out!’

  But it was already too late. The swing door from the kitchen creaked an entrance: Mr Wang appeared. He hissed a string of dangerous Cantonese at his son, who nodded apology and compliance.

  ‘Howya this weather, Mr Wang?’ called Dee. ‘Shockin’ draw in the evenings.’

  ‘Why she on floor?’ Mr Wang furiously observed her sister.

  ‘I’m shot, Johnny! I’m all shot up!’ cried Donna.

  ‘I’d chance the sweet ‘n’ sour,’ said Dee, ‘if the chicken had wings.’

  ‘If the chicken wasn’t 16-to-1 at Shelbourne Park,’ said Donna.

  Such cheek was beyond Mr Wang. He could but glare at them and, more meaningfully, at his son. There would be hysterical words later on, inside by the flypaper and the heat of the fryers. He withdrew.

  ‘Leg it!’ said Lawrence. ‘Lively!’

  ‘You know what’d shift us?’ said Donna. ‘Toss out the keys of the motor there, would ya?’

  Lawrence Wang drove a silvery sports car. Often, on the summer nights, the twins had shared the passenger seat and by long assault on his patience, and by promise of favours to come, they had cajoled him into allowing turns at the wheel. Fast rounds of the industrial estate were performed—they by principle refused to slow down for ramps. One night, with Lawrence Wang reduced to tears, and with Dee on his lap, Donn
a had driven clear of the estate and onto the dual carriageway, where she performed a near-flawless handbrake turn.

  ‘Git!’ said Lawrence Wang.

  ‘Go on, La, one lap of Mondello.’

  ‘Out! Now!’

  Among the fantasies of the village already fallen was that its terrace doors might be left unlocked. That one hadn’t survived the night poor Annie Quinlan came down to her kitchen for a sup of water only to find a hardchaw from Ennis on the floor in front of her, with a tyre iron in his hand. The village by quiet consent then entered the age of security, and its citizens were particularly pleased with their dead bolts, their strobe alarms and their attack dogs when they twitched the curtains of an evening and saw Donna and Dee approaching, with that evil, vivacious, whistling air.

  ‘Don’t gimme no back talk, sucka!’ Donna roared at the Marian statue in the square, for the twins were reverent devotees of The A-Team.

  They aimed toes for Pa Hurley’s garage. It was in the west end, and you’d tell it quick enough because the man himself had painted in red block letters on its gable wall the legend:

  PA HURLEY’S GARAGE.

  Pa kept late hours. Pa hadn’t much choice in the matter. People wanted their cars back to them quick. All the patience was gone out of people, and sure enough, the twins found him on the premises. He was involved with the nether regions of a mint-green Cortina.

  ‘Howya, Pa?’ they sang, in a tone that might turn a lesser man to religion, but Pa Hurley was fond of himself and on a good night would think he had the measure of them. Suavely, he slid from beneath the motor, raised himself onto an elbow, regarded them slowly, grazed his eyes from north pole to south, and smirked.

  ‘How ye keepin’ yereselves?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Donna, letting sad eyes drift to the hills, ‘there’s nights you’d find yourself with a strange auld longin’.’

  Dee picked up a phase tester and twirled it, slowly, then laid its cool steel against her cheek.

  ‘I’ve a class of a want meself,’ she said. ‘But I couldn’t put a finger on it.’

  Donna planted herself on the bonnet of a tan Beetle, crossed her legs at the ankles and assumed a Miss Ireland glaze. Dee put the full five ten of herself at a haughty stand in front of Pa Hurley: it was a pose learned from a Joan Jett video, with the heels planted wide and the perky nose in the air. The phase tester was now threateningly gripped.

  ‘Time you knockin’ off, Bub?’ she said

  Pa Hurley rose. He laughed softly. He took some of the oil off his hands with a rag. He looked around him for fear of neighbours. He was forty and drearily married. Each morning, in the bleakest of hours—the one that comes before first light—he woke to a desperate lust for his own youth. It came in bits of old songs and lines from old films and in the remembered music of old girlfriends’ voices. He could never shake these twinges, not even if he put the pillow over his head against them. The twins had caught this yearning in him—something similar had made a moon-gazer of their own poor father—and they played on it.

  ‘Now listen up, Randy, and listen good,’ said Donna. ‘What say we steal a car and break for the border?’

  ‘Ve vill make Mexico by dawn,’ said Dee.

  ‘We will,’ said Pa Hurley. ‘How’re things with ye anyway?’

  Always, as soon as he was properly exposed to the twins’ presence, to the hum of their animal vitality, the cheek went out of him. This effect on men wasn’t unusual in their short experience.

  ‘Couldn’t be better, Pa,’ said Dee. ‘The hay is in and Cork are bate and all the beans are comin’ up in their lovely little rows.’

  ‘How’re things with ye really?’ he said, and there was a hint of anger, he didn’t know where it came from or why.

  ‘How’s herself above, Pa?’ said Donna, delighted at the spit in him. ‘Is she looking after you good?’

  ‘She’s holding fairly well, Pa, in all fairness like,’ said Dee. ‘That was any amount of a coat she’d on her Saturday night.’

  ‘Go handy now,’ he said and he looked to the ground—their lipstick and their lip gloss sealed his fate.

  ‘You’re treatin’ her right anyway,’ said Donna. ‘God knows don’t she deserve it.’

  ‘No woman deserves it more,’ said Dee.

  ‘Fond of it, I’d say,’ said Donna.

  ‘Like her mother before her,’ said Dee.

  Pa Hurley tried to warn them off with a dangerous look but it was only encouragement.

  ‘Did ye knock out to the new bar Saturday, Pa?’

  ‘We did, yeah.’

  ‘No expense spared. Heard the Guinness there is brutal altogether?’

  ‘Not a great pint,’ he agreed.

  ‘Heard it was like disco Guinness. Would we get in, would you say?’

  ‘Not a chance,’ said Pa Hurley. ‘It’s a respectable establishment.’

  ‘Back in the knife drawer, ducky,’ said Donna.

  ‘Chance at all you’d give us a lift, Pa?’ asked Dee.

  ‘A lift where?’ he said.

  He was wary. He would flirt if he had the mood or drink on him but Pa Hurley was beat if an actual plan was broached.

  ‘Ah sure,’ said Donna, ‘wherever. We could go watch a film or something.’

  ‘Ye’re lethal,’ he said. ‘There’s poor young fellas will do jail for ye.’

  ‘Who owns the Beetle, Pa?’

  ‘Forget about it!’

  ‘Half an hour, Pa. There won’t be a single mark on it.’

  ‘Never again!’ he said. ‘Look, d’ye want a few fags?’

  They cleaned him out of Bensons. They peeled him with sneers. They hissed over their shoulders that he was nothing only a grease monkey but sure they’d call again anyway, all the best, Pa, keep in by the wall.

  They went back among the streets. They sniffed disdainfully as they passed the gates of the Prez, from which they were serving another suspension. They stopped by the window of Daly the butcher. Daly had skinned rabbits hanging there; the display was lit by a pink sacred heart bulb. Though empty for the night, the spirit of Daly filled his shop yet: a whiskey-nosed presence, with the mad cleaver swinging. A fantasy of the village maintained by Daly was that its people were hearty, hill country eaters, as they had been in the days of his father’s butchering. He shot and skinned the rabbits himself and hung them for weeks until they were all but maggoty. Forlornly, then, they’d be brought home to feed the family of Dalys, who had rabbit coming out their ears. The cruel fact was that all Daly ever managed to sell these days was chicken nuggets. The twins were mesmerised by the skinned rabbits. The wine-coloured flesh, with maplines of blue for the hardened veins, and the taut muscles and tendons that still gave a sense of momentum, of swiftness perfected: the hung and skinned rabbits were frozen speed. This was the one moment of the day the twins were without front. There was dark wonder in them.

  ‘I pity the fool!’ said Donna, breaking the spell.

  ‘First name: Mista. Middle name: Period. Last name: T,’ said Dee.

  Out the other end of the village they swung, to where the new estate was being built. The wire rails erected to secure the site had been left unchained. They squeezed through. They walked the raw crescents of the brownfield site in the thickening dark. A uniform shape was emerging. There were glassless windows and slateless roofs. Trenches were being cleared for sewage. The site was on the first steep rise of the hills and it was assaulted at all times by wind: the people who’d come to live here would be skinned themselves. There was a view south to the city: it was ever spreading, quick approaching. It was ten miles wide of sodium light, a sea of promise laid out beneath them. They drank it in and tasted faster nights to come.

  They found a JCB left unlocked. They climbed up it. With the slap of a wedge heel Dee broke off the panel and the wires dangled. They’d an idea which ones to manipulate and to their great delight, the JCB growled to life.

  ‘Gonna open us a can o’ whupass,’ said Donna.

 
; The JCB was steered past the eerie new houses and given some juice to batter aside the wire rails. They hummed soft love songs as they went, they smoked Bensons. They emerged to the village streets. They were not expected anywhere, not anytime soon. The accelerator was floored. They had proper road under them now.

  ‘Let’s see what this baby can do,’ said Dee.

  The change that had come was mostly unseen. It took place behind closed doors, in front rooms and back kitchens, in bedrooms, in the heart. But if it was unseen, it was not unheard. Mr Delahunty, as he pulled the shutters and felt for the padlock, oh Delahunty could hear it well enough. It was a gear change, a low rumbling, a faint groaning beneath the skin of the earth. The ground was readying itself for new life.

  The Wintersongs

  The train pulled into a country station and they piled on board with country groans and country winces. There was hard wheezing and there were low whistles of dismay, as though they were half crucified from the effort of it all. They carried raw November on the breath. They carried phones, food, magazines. They eyeballed seats and shuffled towards the seats, they asked were the seats taken, for form’s sake, but they didn’t wait for an answer—it would take shotguns to keep them out of the seats. The girl tried to project belligerence or even menace but the old woman sat opposite just the same. She was bony and long and turkey-necked, ancient but with a fluency in the features, a face where age surfaces and then recedes again. She wasn’t at all shy.

  Good morning, miss, she said. And I’ll beg your pardon, because the sweat is drippin’ off me. It was touch and go whether I’d make it at all. We have tar taken off that road coming up from the quare place. I’m after getting a lift off the younger one of the Canavans. The small fella, with the arm. Of course you might as well get a lift off a stone but I suppose the Canavans were always odd. He sitting there, bulling, you’d think he was after donating an organ to me. But anyway, I’m here, and I’m in the one piece, just about. What have we? Nine o’clock. Nine, and I’ve half a day put down. What did you say your name was? Lovely. And is that with an ‘h’?