A Ton of Malice

by Barry McKinley

  Wuzzy was alone in the house when we called. He had just painted his bedroom walls with one thin coat of “midnight sky” emulsion. Blotches of the previous colour showed through, like pasty skin under a black nylon stocking. We sat on the bed. Wuzzy weighed the tennis ball in his hand. He batted his eyes and licked his lips. In the semi-darkness he looked just like his crazy sister, only without the speed bumps. He gave us £40 and six tabs of acid that he kept in the middle of a Sven Hassel book. We were on our way to Knebworth.

  Three years later, just before I left Ireland for good, I ran into Paul coming out of a bookie shop in the Rainy Town. He was counting money.

  “Did you win?” I asked.

  “Nah! Just counting what I didn’t lose.”

  I asked him if he was working and he said, “People who hire people don’t hire people like me.”

  We’d taken different paths after that summer in the fields. He had dived into a bad world where people stole each other’s televisions and forged each other’s signatures. These people owned dogs that never stopped barking and children that never stopped crying. These people were not recreational users; they were occupational users. Narcotics was their day job.

  “Recently I’ve been getting the feeling that somebody is standing behind me,” Paul said. “You ever get anything like that?”

  I told him I didn’t.

  “It’s like something permanent and dark is hovering behind me. I think I know what it is, but I’m afraid to say.”

  “Really?” I said, looking for a way around him on the footpath.

  “Do you ever think about your soul?”

  I thought he was joking, so I turned up the sole of my shoe for a moment and studied it

  “I’m worried about damnation,” he said. “You know… Knebworth.”

  I didn’t remember much about that episode. Before we got on the ferry to England, we dropped the acid and smoked a small blob of opium we had kept. Somewhere outside Chester, everything started to blur. I vaguely recalled running down a street shouting, “Thank you Satan,” while Paul charged along beside me, going, “You’re a top man Satan, top man.”

  “It must get to you,” he persisted.

  I told him I had to go, but he was blocking my way. His eyes flicked around and he was biting his lips. “I think the devil is behind us,” he said. “I know you feel it too. Look at the way the town has slowed down all around us, traffic standing still, birds stopped in mid-air. You know, I can hear things. I can hear your heart beating, the blood running around in your veins, the thoughts jumping across the tiny spaces inside your head. Remember the field, the hut, the Stanley knife, the blood. The bargain with Lucifer?”

  “I’m in a hurry,” I said.

  “We’re both empty canisters, spiritual voids forced to walk around this arse of a town, eating, drinking, smoking and backing horses.”

  “I don’t back horses,” I said.

  His face fell in disappointment, but he pressed on. “I know how we can win back our souls,” he said.

  I wanted to laugh in his face, but for all I knew, he still had that Stanley knife.

  “The 4:25 at Newmarket, there’s a horse called Mephistophilly. Long shot, fifty-to-one, but it’s a sign. Me running into you like this? Another sign.”

  “How much do you need?” I asked.

  He looked hurt. He tilted his head like a puzzled dog. “Don’t you get it? This is a chance for us to redeem our spiritual essence. How could you even put a price on something like that? An opportunity to pull the burning disks out of the eternal flame and dip them in the ice-cold water of deliverance? You think that’s about money?”

  “How much do you fucking want?” I said.

  He shrank back. “A tenner would do,” he said.

  I gave him five and told him to leave me out of it; the devil could keep my soul. He took the note and folded it. He pressed it into his palm and then closed his fist like a magician. He was about to make money disappear. He turned and went back into the bookies. A bunch of wasted men stood looking up at the speaker, listening to the numbers and the odds. Paul joined them. He took a seat in the corner of the shop, closed his eyes, and waited for the race to start.

  32

  BLOOD

  FRIDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1979

  The florist outside the church at Saint-Germain-des-Prés holds up a cluster of blue stuff. “Anemone hépatique,” she says.

  I nod.

  “Pied d’alouette,” she says, brandishing some yellow stuff.

  I nod again.

  “Lily?” she says, in uncertain English. “For truth and honour?”

  “Best skip that,” I say.

  I go for a dozen roses and something she calls “les pois de senteur”. She wraps the bunch, adds a bow, two little bells and some sparkly sprinkles. All of a sudden I look like I’m on my way to a gay funeral.

  “How much?” I ask, holding out my crinkly notes.

  She takes the lot and gives me three coins in change.

  “Au revoir,” she says.

  The concierge answers the door on Rue Jacob. I take a rose from the unwieldy bunch and hand it to her.

  “Elle est jolie,” she says.

  I tell her she is jolie too which of course she isn’t. She turns bright red and I am surprised. I didn’t think middle-aged people could blush.

  “Cinquième étage, chambre vingt-six,” she says, pointing towards the service entrance.

  I go to the stairs. In my head, jostling with the poison, is a voice from my childhood. Sister Euphrasia. A champion of conservative Catholicism. Whenever she blessed herself she made the sign of the swastika, and every one of her utterances both started and finished with an interrogative: “What are you doing, boy? In the name of all that is holy, what?”

  “I have no idea,” I say aloud.

  I stop at the second landing and look out at the courtyard. The concierge stands in a beam of sunlight looking at the rose.

  I don’t feel well. My toothache is back. I need something to calm me down. Maybe one of those tranquiliser darts they shoot at elephants. Throw a net over me and strap me to the front of a Jeep.

  A door opens on the third floor and a teenager with a punky haircut appears. He has the look of someone on the run, like an Irish boy dodging a pregnant girlfriend. Insertion followed by desertion. He glowers when he sees me. Do I look like a burglar? Would a burglar be carrying a giant bunch of flowers? In France, probably yes.

  My jaw explodes with every heartbeat.

  Two more floors to go. I need a sherpa. “McKinley reached the summit and planted the Irish flag. Tensing Norgay followed close behind, bearing an enormous bouquet.”

  This journey seemed like a good idea a long time ago. Yesterday? I can’t recall. I’ve perdued a lot of temps since then. I’m angry. Irishmen are always angry. They’re always asking each other outside for fights. It’s why there are no submarines in the Irish navy.

  As a draughtsman, I can see a cross section through this entire building: the joists, doorjambs, twisted coils of electrical cable, voids filled with mouse droppings, concealed lead piping wrapped in blankets of asbestos, men in showers, teenagers lounging in beds, small dogs in baskets, tables littered with empty wine bottles, bedrooms choked with clothing.

  Two potted plants and a child’s scooter on the fourth-floor landing. Shoes outside a door. The smell of coffee. Laughter. Joy. Happiness? Is this France or did I get on the wrong boat?

  I look out through the landing window and the concierge is dancing with her flower. Yes, it’s France.

  I stand outside number twenty-six with a pumping heart. I turn the doorknob and to my surprise, the door opens.

  The room is tiny. The window takes up most of one wall, a washbasin and bookcase another. She has taped some of her monotone paintings above the headboard: ballet dancers and teapots rendered in splashes of gouache and Indian ink. Beside the bed, on a table with short legs, is Iron in the Soul by Sartre, who also had short legs.
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br />   There is something heart-shaped on the floor beside the bed, no bigger than a thumb nail. Perhaps it has fallen out of a pocket. I know what it is, but I pretend to myself that I don’t.

  In a white sweatshirt with a tangle of strawberry blonde curls spilling like foam across the pillow, she is perfectly still. Her fingers clutch the outside edge of the sheet, but the rest of her is hidden beneath a mound of heavy blankets.

  “Kim,” I say in a voice that never leaves my mouth.

  I stand in the doorway and watch her sleep. I used to do this when we lived together. I was fascinated by the peace she brought into a room, the silent calm. I’d smoke a joint and watch her breathe. It was television with the sound turned down and the sexiness turned up. Way up.

  “Kim,” I say, and the word comes out as a whisper. She stirs and tightens her grip on the sheet. “It’s Barry.”

  Her brow furrows. I say nothing more and she relaxes. I think of the early morning sex we used to have in London. I called it mornication.

  “Kim,” I say again, and this time the volume startles me.

  Her eyes open wide and she screams. She sits upright in the bed. “Oh my God! What are you doing here?”

  It isn’t a promising start.

  “How did you get this address?”

  “Good morning to you, too.”

  We look at one another and the room closes in. The ceiling comes down and brushes the top of my head. The walls reach out and touch each other. She clears her throat. She takes a sip of water from a glass on the windowsill. “Why are you here? You have to go,” she says.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving London?” I ask.

  A look of incredulity sweeps across her face, opening her mouth and narrowing her eyes. “Why? Because you were the one I was getting away from. Now, please go!”

  “Kim, I’ve come a long way.”

  “I can’t believe you just walked in.”

  “Well, the door was open.”

  She blanks her expression. She does this when she wants to change the subject.

  “You look a fright,” she says.

  “You look beautiful,” I reply.

  Maybe she softens a little, but there is no sign of surrender. I look at the heart-shaped plectrum on the floor. She follows my gaze. And we both know the truth. I bend down and retrieve it.

  “Learning to play the guitar?” I say.

  She looks out the window and I talk to the back of her head.

  “You had somebody here last night,” I say. “Was he French?”

  “American.” she replies.

  I picture a gladiatoral guitar slinger with the Stars and Stripes tattooed on his ample chest and power chords pumping from him amplifier.

  “A boyfriend?”

  “No. In fact I just met him last night, in Polly Magoo’s.”

  “I see. Now you’re fucking strangers you meet in bars? I suppose it’s a good way to make some extra pocket money.”

  She doesn’t rise to the provocation. The house pitches and yaws as if it has been hit by a giant wave. I half expect to look out the window and see a rising tide, carrying the dancing, drowning concierge.

  “Please. Go,” she says. “I don’t want to ask you again.”

  “You haven’t told me why.”

  She fixes me with something that looks like pity. “I left you because you were a monster. Not a big monster, just a small, nasty monster. I left you because I was tired of….”

  I stop listening. I look at the book on the bedside table. The cover shows a horned man with a bloodied sword and a bag of human heads slung over his shoulder. I really want to beat the shit out of Sartre. I imagine I’m thumping him and he calls for back-up. Samuel Beckett joins the fray. “I will not let you strike the little man,” he says as he puts up his fists like a Trinity Protestant. Boom! Kick to the knee, low punch to the testicles and Ireland’s greatest living playwright goes down like a sack of pommes de terre.

  “You never listen to me,” Kim says. “You’re not even listening to me now.”

  “Well at least the sex was good,” I say.

  “No,” she said. Sex with you wasn’t like sex. It was as if you were stabbing me.”

  “Oh yeah? Well I never heard anybody say, ‘Yes, yes! Right there! That’s the spot!’ when they were being stabbed.”

  I slip my hand into my pocket and pull out the switchblade to illustrate the point. Kim is shocked and silent and I am aware of the terrible contrast between love and sharp steel. I have to do something with the blade, now that it’s out. A knife has certain needs. I start shredding the flowers. The leaves and the petals fall to the ground in a tumble of mixed colours. It strikes me that, with all my rages and tantrums, I’ve never seen her look this scared. I shred and I shred until nothing remains. A cluster of flowers at my feet, I’m a junkie Thérèse of Lisieux, lit by a yellow beam of sunlight rising over a courtyard gable.

  Then there is blood. It falls on the flowers and splashes my shoes. I look in the mirror and see the stream oozing from my mouth and running down my chin. The stitches have burst and the pain is released. Now I know why vampires smile.

  Kim backs into the corner and wraps herself in a cocoon of blanket. I am not a small monster. I am a monstrous monster. Size is always important.

  On Rue Bonaparte, a man walks towards me carrying a poodle in a shopping bag. The dog stares straight at me and I am filled with a resentment directed at all things canine and all things French. If I had my own shopping bag it would contain an angry Irish setter with sharp fangs and a hunger for toy dogs. Sean the setter would devour Pierre the poodle and wash him down with black frothy water from a Parisian puddle.

  The man smiles as he passes me. I feel exposed. When you take away an Irishman’s anger, you’re left with nothing but a bare, quivering skeleton. I reach Quai de Conti where the bouquinistes are laying out their antique porn and bandes dessinées for the lonely men in dark sunglasses. I spot the Pont des Arts, half a bridge going nowhere.

  I ask a man on the quayside, “Où est le reste du pont?”

  “It collapsed when it was hit by a barge,” he replies in English

  “Fucking French drivers,” I say.

  He walks away. Will nobody fight with me?

  I reach the Pont Neuf and the statue of Henry IV. Down the steps to the Square du Vert Galant, the arrowhead at the tip of the Île de la Cité. I sit on the bench and watch the heavy barges struggle against the river. It’s a nice place to relax and swallow some blood. I look at the heart-shaped plectrum I kept as a souvenir. I flip it over and discover the motto stamped on the back: “I PICK YOU.”

  I start to laugh. It’s the sort of laugh that drives away people and pigeons.

  “PLUCK YOU TOO,” I say as I toss the heart in the river.

  It’s quiet except for the voices.

  “You have to stop,” Kim said before I left.

  “Stop what?”

  “Stop this.”

  “I can’t. I have to keep going until everything is…”

  “Everything is what?”

  “Everything is broken.”

  A police launch goes past on the river with a siren blaring and blue lights flashing. When the sound subsides, I hear another voice, harsh and probing, devoid of pity. It belongs to Sister Euphrasia. Her words bounce off the Pont Neuf and Notre Dame cathedral, they echo over the copper rooftops with their fired clay flues. The question is given to the entire city of Paris, but of course there is no answer.

  “Where will you go now, boy? In the name of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, where?”

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  A special thanks to Julian, Susie, Charlie, Mark, Margaret & Nollaig, and all at The Story House Ireland.

  COPYRIGHT

  Published in Trade Paperback in 2017 in the UK by Old Street Publishing Ltd

  This ebook edition first published in 2017

  by Old Street Publishing Ltd

  8 Hurlingham Business Park, Sulivan Road, Lo
ndon SW6 3DU

  All rights reserved

  © Barry McKinley

  The right of Barry McKinley to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

  ISBN 978–1–910400–54–8