by Kevin Barry
There was a café nearby, on Denmark Street. I would not call it a stylish operation. It was a tight cramped space, with a small scattering of tables, greasy ketchup holders, wipeable plastic table cloths in a check pattern, Larry Gogan doing the just-a-minute quiz on a crackling radio, and I took a seat, composed myself, and considered the menu. It was written in a language I had no knowledge of. The slanted graphics of the lettering were a puzzle to me, the numerals were alien, I couldn’t even tell if I was holding the thing the right way up. No matter, I thought, sure all I’m after is a drop of soup, and I clicked my fingers to summon the waiter.
You’d swear I’d asked him to take out his eyes and put them on a plate for me. The face on him, and he slugging across the floor, a big bruiser from the country.
‘What’s the soup, captain?’ I asked.
‘Carrot and coriander,’ he said, flatly, as though the vocal chords were held with pliers. He seemed to grudge me the very words, and he did so in a midwestern accent and as always, this drew me in.
I considered the man. A flatiron face, hot with angry energies, mean thin mouth, aggravation in the oyster-grey eyes, and a challenging set to the jaw, anticipating conflict, which I had no intention of providing. I looked at him, wordlessly—you’ll understand that by now I was somewhat adrift, as regards the emotions—and the café was on pause around us, and he grew impatient.
‘Do you want the soup or what?’ he said, almost hissed it, and it was at this point he clarified for me, I made out the childhood face in back of the adult’s.
‘It’s Thomas, isn’t it? Thomas Cremins?’
Sealight came into the oyster-grey, he gleamed with recognition, and it put the tiniest amount of happiness in his face—even this was enough to put some innocence back, too, and thus youth. He clarified still further: detail came back for me. He’d been one of those gaunt kids, bootlace thin and more than averagely miserable, a slime of dried snot on the sleeve of his school jumper. I remembered him on the bus home each day, waiting for someone braver to make the first move at hooliganism. A sheep, a follower, no doubt dull-minded, but somehow I remembered kindness in him, too. He said:
‘Fitz?’
We talked, awkwardly but warmly, and with each sentence my own accent became more midwestern, and his circumstances came back to me. I remembered the small house, on a greystone terrace, near the barracks. Sometimes, after school, I would have been in there for biscuits and video games, and I remembered his sister, too, older and blousy, occasional fodder of forlorn fantasies, and of course there was his younger brother, younger than me but… ah.
Alan Cremins had been killed, hadn’t he? Of course, it all came back. It had been one of these epochal childhood deaths some of us have the great excitement to encounter. He was caught in an April thunderstorm, fishing at Plassey, and he took shelter in a tower there and was struck by lightning. I remember the shine of fear on us all, for weeks after. Hadn’t we all been fishing at Plassey, at some point or other, and hadn’t we all seen the weather that day, it could have been each and any of us. It was about this same time I noticed girls. I liked big healthy girls with well-scrubbed faces. We had any amount of them in the midwest.
Should I mention it?
‘I remember,’ I said. ‘Oh God, Thomas, I remember the time with Alan. When he, you know …’
‘Al?’ he smiled. ‘You remember Al?’
‘Of course,’ I said, though in truth it was vague. I remembered a slip of a child, a pale face, hadn’t he, blue-veined I think, one of those cold-looking young fellas.
‘Sure isn’t he inside,’ beamed Thomas, and he called out:
‘Al! Come here I want you!’
Alan Cremins, in chef pants and a sweat-drenched tee-shirt, with a tureen’s ladle in his hand, stepped through the swing doors of the kitchen and he smiled at me, a somewhat foxed smile.
‘Fitz?’ he said.
Grotesque! Horrible! A child’s head on a full-grown man’s body! I legged it. What else could I do? Away into the winter streets, these malignant streets, and I raved somewhat at the falling skies: you couldn’t but forgive me for that.
By and by, anger overtook my despair. Frankly, I’d had enough of this messing for one day. I raised the collars of my jacket and dug my hands into the pockets of my trousers. I hunched my shoulders against the knifing wind. The sky was heavy with snow, and it began to fall, and each drop had taken on the stain of the town before it hit the pavement. Chestnut sellers huddled inside their ancient greatcoats. Beggars whittled the dampness off sticks to keep the barrel fires stoked. The talkshops sang in dissonant voices. Tyres squealed angrily in the slush. Black dogs roamed in packs. We were all of us in the town bitten with cold, whipped by the wind, utterly ravaged by this mean winter, but we stomped along, regardless, like one of those marvellously tragic Russian armies one reads about.
Of course, yes. The obvious explanation did present itself, and as I slipped along the streets, heading north out of town, I considered it. If the dead were all around me, was it conceivable that I myself had joined their legion ranks? Was this heaven or hell on the North Circular Road? A ludicrous idea, clearly—I was in far too much pain not to be alive. I soldiered on. I began to wind my way slowly westwards and the streets quietened of commerce and became small terrace streets, and toothless crones huddled in the sad grogshops, and from somewhere there was the scrape of a plaintive fiddle. A man with a walrus moustache came along, all purposeful, and he passed a handbill to me. It announced a public meeting the Saturday coming: Larkin was the promised speaker, his topic predictably dreary.
I made it to the park, and it was desolate, with nobody at all to be seen, and it calmed me to walk there. I came across some of the park’s tame deer. They were huddled behind a windbreak of trees, and I stopped to watch them. The tough-skinned bucks seemed comfortable enough in the extreme weather, but the does and the fawns had to work hard at it—there were rolling shudders of effort along their flanks as they took down the cold air, and the display of this was a symptom of glorious life, and my heart rose.
Fawns! I was clearly in a highly emotional state, and I thought it best to make a move for home. Jesus’ sake, Fitzy, I said, come on out of it, will you, before they arrive with the nets.
I went into the northwestern suburbs of the town, the patch that I had made my home, and I allowed no stray thoughts. By sheer force of will, I would put the events of the afternoon behind me. I made it at last to my quiet, residential street in my quiet, residential suburb. I rent there the ground floor of an ageing semi, and the situation I find ideal. I have a sitting room, a lounge, a neat, single man’s bedroom, and a pleasant, light kitchen from which French doors open to a small, oblong garden, and to this I have sole access. I turned the key and stepped inside. I brushed the dirty snow from my shoulders, and I allowed the weight of the day to slide from me with the chalkstripe jacket. I blew on my hands to warm them. I went through to the kitchen area and drank a glass of water. I then pulled open the French doors and stepped outside.
I stepped into glorious summer. The fruit trees were full in bloom, and it was the dense languor of July heat, unmistakable, and I unfolded my striped deckchair and sat back in it. The transistor was by my feet and I turned it on for the gentle strings, for the swoons and lulls of the afternoon concert. I removed my galoshes and my shoes and stockings, and I stretched ten pale toes on the white-hot concrete of the patio. I unfolded my handkerchief and tied it about my head. I turned up the sleeves of my shirt, and opened the top three pearl buttons to reveal an amount of scrawny chest. I listened: to the soft stir of the notes, and the trills and scratchings of insect life all around, and the efficient buzzing of the hedge strimmers, and the children of the vicinity at play. They played crankily in the sun, and it was my experience that the hot days could make the children come over rather evil-eyed and scary, beyond mere mischief, and sometimes on the warm nights they lurked till all hours around the streets, they hid from me in the shadows, and pl
ayed unpleasant tricks, startling me out of my skin as I walked home from the off-licence.
Drinks were all I was required to provide for myself. Since I had begun this lease, I found that the shelves daily replenished themselves. Nothing fancy, but sufficient: fresh fruit and veg, wholemeal breads, small rations of lean meat and tinned fish, rice and pasta, tubs of stir-in sauce, leaf tea, occasionally some chocolate for a treat. I had a small money tin in the kitchen, and each time I opened it, it contained precisely eight euro and ninety-nine cent, which was the cost of a drinkable rioja at the nearby branch of Bargain Booze. Utilities didn’t seem to be an issue—no bills arrived. In fact, there was no mail from anywhere, ever.
The phone, however, was another matter. Sometimes, it seemed as if the thing never stopped, and it rang now, and I sighed deeply in my deckchair, and I lifted my ageless limbs. I went inside to it—summoned! The power of the little fucker.
‘Uphi uBen?’ said the voice. ‘Le yindawo la wafa khona?’
‘I’m sorry,’ I replied, wearily. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. Didn’t get a word.’
‘Ngifanele ukukhuluma naye.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Not getting this at all. Thank you.’
I hung up, and waited, for the calls always came in threes, and sure enough, it immediately rang again.
‘Chce rozmawiac z Maria! Musze powiedziec jej, ze ja kocham!’
‘Please!’ I said. ‘Don’t you speak any English at all?’
‘For sure,’ he said, and hung up.
The third call was promptly put through.
‘An bhfuil Tadgh ann? An bhfaca tú Tadhg?’
‘I don’t know any Tadhgs!’ I cried. ‘I haven’t seen any Tadhgs!’
I’d complained several times to the Exchange, for all the good it had done me, but I thought I may as well try again. I dialled the three-digit number and was quickly connected to a faceless agent. The Exchange was part of the apparatus of the State that seemed to be a law onto itself. I gave my name and my citizen tag-number.
‘I’m getting the calls again,’ I said. ‘It’s been a bad week, it’s been practically every day this week and sometimes at night, too. Can you imagine what this is doing to my nerves? There’s been no improvement at all. You promised it would improve!’
‘Who promised, sir?’
‘One of your agents.’
‘Which agent, sir?’
‘How would I know? I wasn’t given the agent i.d., was I?’
‘No you were not, sir. We are hardly permitted to enter into personal terms with citizens of the State. It would be untoward, sir. This is the Exchange, sir.’
‘Well how can I tell if…’
‘Please hold.’
A maudlin rendition of ‘Spanish Harlem’, on trumpet, and I whistled along, miserably. I had fallen into melancholy—the drab old routine of these days can get to a soul. But I was determined not to hang up. They expect you to hang up, you see, and in this way, they can proceed, they can get away with their thoughtlessness. The music faded out, and I was given a series of fresh options.
‘If you wish to hear details of the Exchange’s new evening call rates, please press one.’
I threw my eyes to the heavens.
‘If you would like a top-up for your free-go, anywhere-anytime service, please press two.’
I refused to carry one of those infernal contraptions.
‘If you wish to discuss employment opportunities at the Exchange, and to hear details of our screening arrangements, and of our physical and mental requirements for operatives, voice engineers and full-blown agents, please press three.’
I’d rather work in the sewers.
‘If you seek an answer to the sense of vagueness that surrounds your existence like a fine mist, please press four.’
I pressed four. A happy voice exploded in my ear. It was the voice of heartiness. It was the voice of a resort manager at a mid-priced beach destination. It was a kind of stage Australian.
‘Watcha!’ it said. ‘Feelin’ kinda grooky, mate? What ya wanna do, ya wanna go down yar garden, ya wanna go down them fruit trees, and ya wanna find the ladder that’s hidden there, right? Then what do ya do? YA BLOODY WELL CLIMB IT!!!’
The phone cut out—dead air. I proceeded directly to the garden. I put on a pair of plimsolls. I removed the handkerchief from my head. I walked down to the dense, summer tangle of fruit trees. I pulled back the hanging vines, parted the thick curtains of growth, and I could see nothing, at first, but then my eyes adjusted to the dappled half-light and I made out a dull, golden gleam, and yes, it was a ladder. I pushed my way through, thorns snagging on my trousers, and I began to climb. Slowly, painfully, I ascended through the thick foliage and I came to the treetops, and a view of my suburb, its neat hedges and mossy slate rooftops, and I climbed on, and I went into the white clouds and I climbed still higher, and the ladder rose up against rocky outcrops. I found that I was climbing past the blinding limestone of a cliff-face, and at last I got to the top, and I hauled myself up onto the salty, springy turf.
I walked. The marine breeze was pleasant, at first, after my sweaty efforts, but soon it started to chill me. It was a bright but blowy spring day, and the first of the cliff-top flowers were starting to appear: the tormentil, the early orchids, the bird’s foot trefoil. A milky white sea lapped below, it had latent aggression in it, and I looked down the stretch of the coastline and oh, I don’t know, it may have been Howth, or Bray, or one of these places. There was nobody around. Black-headed terns battled with the wind and rose up on it, they let it turn and throw them: sheer play. I walked, and I concentrated on clearing my mind. I wanted to white out now. I wanted to leave all of it behind me again.
Yes I walked, I walked into the breeze, and after a time I came to one of those mounted telescopes, the kind that you always get at the seaside. I searched in my pocket, found a half-crown, inserted it, and the block slid away on the eyepiece and I looked through. There appeared to be a problem with the telescope—it was locked in place, it wouldn’t swivel and allow me to scan the water, the shore, the sky. It was locked onto a small circle of grey shingle, just by the water’s edge, and I saw that it was a cold and damp day down there. It was winter by the tide-line, it was springtime on the cliffs.
I kept looking, and she appeared. She crouched on her heels and looked out over the water. She wore a long coat, belted, and a wool scarf about her throat. It wasn’t a close-up view but even so, I could see that age had gone on her. I could see the slump of adult weariness. The view was in black and white, flickering, it was old footage, a silent movie, and I knew that the moment down there had passed, too, and that she herself was long gone now. If I was to find her again, it would be pure chance, a random call coming through the Exchange. And I would try to explain, I would. I’d try to tell her why it had happened the way that it did, but my words would sink beneath the waves, where shock-bright colours surprise the gloom: the anemones and starfish and deadman’s fingers, the clam and the barnacle, the brittlestar.
The eyepiece blacked out and I walked back the way that I came. I descended the ladder to an autumn garden. Russets and golds and a bled, cool sky: turtleneck weather. My favourite time, the season of loss and devotion.
Nights At The Gin Palace
Wireless ten years, at large in the ancient house, prey to odd shudders in the small hours, Freddie Bliss had more or less given up on the idea of sleep. Subsequently he had gone a little daft. But sleep? No. He had no time for it anymore. Life is precious—grab as much of it as you can. This was the Freddie Bliss philosophy.
‘They’ve stopped the night outside High Hesket,’ said his daughter, Angelica, a large peach-skinned woman in her flailing forties. ‘They’ve bunked up at a Roadsleeper and they’ll be heading here first thing. There’s a crew of twelve. There are two trucks for equipment. They want to know if there are any characters among the builders.’
‘What builders?’
‘Well, this is th
e problem, isn’t it? I wonder is it too late to get Joe up? He’s larger than life, Joe. But there’s the question of his tags, isn’t there?’
‘His what?’
‘TAGS! His probation. Though they might make an exception for TV.’
‘Jailbird, is he? Another one, Angel?’
‘Miscarriage of justice,’ she said, and with a noiseless swivel of her powerful shoulders she swung the giant mallet hammer at an internal wall.
‘That bitch was psychotic! Joe acted purely in self-defence. Of course he had previous, I grant you.’
Freddie Bliss mouthed a soft note of sympathy, and he continued his search for drink.
‘It’s an outrage, Daddy, what these old bastards in the courts get away with. Whoremasters, the lot of them!’
‘What’s he inside for?’
‘Are you listening to a single word? Turn your ears on! I said PROBATION! I said MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE!’
‘Oh!’ said Freddie Bliss. ‘You needn’t tell me! I lost all faith in the legal system in 1974, Angel. Remember the business with the gypsies? Remember whose side the courts took? Well! Never again, I said. Never again will I submit to those dogs.’
Angelica put down the mallet hammer, wiped her brow, and paced the faded linoleum of the kitchen floor. She was in a condition of high wrath but she stopped, suddenly, and stared off into space—she had been arrested by gentle thoughts. She closed her eyes, and held her head at a respectful incline. She slid a stockinged toe up her calf to attend an itch.
‘Joe,’ she whispered, ‘is a gentle, oh a gentle man! He is so loving, Daddy, and kind. It’s the small things that he does, the tiny things! They make the man. I can actually say that I consider myself a very, very lucky woman.’
‘I’m delighted for you, dear. It’s time you had some luck. I’m afraid you’ve rather been through the wringer.’
Dapper Bliss rummaged among the bottles for something to stiffen the coffee. Angelica wasn’t a terrific one for sleep either, and now the pair of them were often to be found, late on, arranging a brew, as the night birds fluted outside, and the old shale earth sent up its black breaths. She had come home, at last, to settle. The plan was to turn the place into a guesthouse. But no, not a guesthouse. If he said guesthouse, she flew into a rage.