by Kevin Barry
But all we can do is fucken try, he says.
A powerful chewer: the way his massive chin swings side to side and churns—they are handing out the chins around here. He mops a hunk of bread across the yellow of the egg yolks, and there is the smell of burnt fat and greasy cloy.
Have you not et? he says.
I’m fine, Cornelius. I’ll have a fag in a bit.
Humorous eyes; a shaking of the head. He zips from plate to plate and back again. He is very neat about his work, slicing a rasher here, a sausage there, having a chew and half a grilled tomato, a soft chuckling, a little sigh of thanks.
Black pudding? John says.
Yes?
Congealed blood is what it is.
You wouldn’t eat a bit?
Me? I’m macrobiotic.
Which means you ate what, fleas?
Hatchet-Face comes to work around the edges of the room, tidying and settling away, but really just the better to observe Cornelius and his great handsome bull’s head: we are in the presence of legend.
About my situation, Mr. O’Grady?
Yes?
I really don’t need a fucking circus right now. The most important thing is no one knows I’m out here.
Cornelius fills his mug from a silver pot and runs his eyes about the room.
John, he says, half the newspapermen in Dublin are after piling onto the Westport train.
Oh for fucksake!
But we aren’t beat yet. The train’s an hour till it’s in. We’ll throw a shape lively.
He’s bigger sat down than he is stood up. Short-legged, squat, the giant head rolls cockily as they move, and Cornelius aims a wave for Hatchet-Face—she flutters as though for a sexy saint.
All I want is to get to my island.
Which is it is yours?
It’s called Dorinish.
You’d say it Durn-ish.
You know the one?
There are maps but I’d pay no mind to them. Wait for me at the back door and I’ll swing the van around.
The van?
Is right.
What’s happened our Merc?
That wasn’t my car at all, John.
And where are we headed exactly?
Cornelius sends up his sighs. He looks at his pale charge sadly, as though at a tiny injured bird, and he jerks a black thumb over his shoulder.
West, he says.
———
The van’s a bone-rattler, a money-shaker, all rust and lung disease, and it screeches for death as it revs up pace for the sudden turns and the gut-heaving drops: see now how the land falls away. There is mist on the hills; he can see reaching for the crags and granite tops the wispy fingers of the mist on the hills, and Cornelius’s blue eyes are set to a high murderous burn—his hilarity—and John is on the lam and loves it although he has a sad stretch, about home, but just for a half-mile or so—it passes—and the van screams and barks and it smells of the other Monday’s fish: John’s stomach lurches and his soul groans. He lights another fag, an evil Gitane.
There’s one day I’d be after mackerel, Cornelius says. There’s another day I’d be dosing sheep. Another again? I’d be playing the chauffeur. And only last Thursday gone? I dug a grave for a man that took a sudden stroke…Sixty-two years of age and he only trying to watch a bit of television. God rest him.
Cornelius quickens the van for a blind turn. He accelerates again to come out of the bend. He plays at full volume a vile country music all twangy hoedowns and cry-it-to-the-moon laments but in awful, reaching, sobbing, spud-Irish voices.
John eyeballs the fucker hard—
Cornelius?
—but he is paid no mind.
He slaps eject to pop the cassette but Cornelius slaps it back to play again.
Ray Lynam, he says. That’s one powerful fucken singer.
Keep the dogs at bay. This is the most important thing. Keep the hissing pack at bay and get me to my fucking island. His new friend whistles jauntily as he steers the van.
Cornelius?
Yes, John?
You do realise it’s extremely fucking important that no one knows I’m out here?
I do of course.
Because it would ruin everything, Cornelius. It would defeat the whole fucking purpose.
I understand, John. But I’ve a feeling the fuckers aren’t far off our trail.
How can you tell?
From the way the air is settling around us.
His eyes shoot to the rearview, to the wings.
Do you understand what I mean by that?
I’ve no fucking idea.
The ground can be kind of thin around here, John.
Thin?
Which means all you’ve to do is listen.
The van spins into the mist. Cornelius taps time on the wheel. John is not used to the company of males anymore. All the musk and hilarity and contest. Slate-grey to sea-green, the hills fall away. Melancholy, too, can gleam, jewel-like—as in the rain’s sheen that blackens stone—and Cornelius steers blithely, and he beats time with his thumbs, and he turns happily—
Tell me just the one thing, John.
Yes?
Why’s it you want to go to this little island?
Because I want to be that fucking lonely I’ll want to fucking die.
Cornelius jaws on this for a bit and winces, and he nods it through—he is at length satisfied.
I have you now, he says.
The blue-bleak hills. The veiling of the fog.
This is just what I’m after, John says.
He is all business now—
About a boat and supplies?
Do I look like the fucken boy scouts, John?
The tape chews and a country song sticks hard on a high note and yodels; Cornelius pops the tape free and slaps in another; he throws a dark look seaward.
I’d doubt we’ll be putting out in that.
Bit choppy?
He whistles through his nose; he sucks his teeth.
We’ll keep you hid till the pressmen clear, John. We’ll wait out the assault.
I haven’t got all bloody year!
They’ll want for patience. If they don’t get the smell of you in a day or two, they’ll be gone.
Just hole me up at a different hotel then.
Hotels no good. Too easy follow you out from a hotel. How’d you think they got wind of you in the first place?
You don’t mean our woman in Newport?
Well.
Fucking Hatchet-Face!
The same woman has two husbands buried in the one plot, John. A small bit of respect would be no harm.
He massages the bridge of his nose—the painful place.
So where do I go, Cornelius?
I’m thinking the best thing for now would be my own house.
Super.
The van climbs and on a sudden turn, at a height above them, a silver horse in full mantle—its eyes shaded—is formed from the motes of air and mist and rises on its hind legs and makes a great silent scream—something Hispanic here—and its teeth are yellowish, foam-flecked, pointed, and it evaporates again, just so and as quickly, this image or vision, into time and the sodden air.
Cornelius?
Yes, John?
———
They climb into the sky. There are woeful songs about lost sweethearts, lonesome moonlight, dead fucking dogs.
It’s coming between us, Cornelius.
The which?
The fucking music.
Cornelius slaps eject and the cassette pops—he flings it to the dash.
Thank you very fucking much.
You’re very fucken welcome.
They climb some more—the country falls away.
As a matter of fact the van knows the road, Cornelius says.
A street gang of sheep appear—like teddy boys bedraggled in rain, dequiffed in mist—and Cornelius bamps the hooter—like teddy boys on a forlorn Saturday in the north of England, 1957—and the sheep explod
e in all directions and John can see the fat pinks of their tongues.
Mutton army, he says.
They climb the hills inside a cloud. Crags poke through; knuckles show. They come on a patch of clear blue for a stretch and he can see for the first time Clew Bay entirely and the way its tiny islands are flung out by the dozens and the hundreds.
It’s been nine fucking years…How the hell are we going to find my island, Cornelius?
With enormous difficulty, John.
His stomach loops against the bumps of the road. His stones ache and tighten. He rolls the window for some air.
The bloody damp, he says.
And his bones remember Sefton Park as a kid—
Wet jumper.
Chest infection.
Irish Sea.
The van climbs. They are inside a cloud again. They are up and about the knuckles of the hills—it’s the bleakest place on earth.
All this is O’Grady land, Cornelius says. Not that you’d feed the fucken duck off it.
An old farmhouse rises up from the hill—ramshackle, ill-kept, a growth on the hill. The van eases to a stop and a slow, deep-breathing silence. The house sits in complete agreement with its sad hill.
Fucken place, Cornelius says.
The wind drops and there is dead quiet—
Nothing moves.
Not a bird does sing.
The house was my father’s before me. And you know he never so much as shaved in the house?
Oh?
Nor shat, John. He would have thought it dirty.
Emotion is about Cornelius like a black cloak now—
Oh my poor departed father…
His voice almost gives.
Death be good to him, he says.
He sighs and consults his belly and whispers a fast prayer.
They threw away the fucken manual, he says, after they designed my father.
Silence; a slow beat.
He turns to look at John carefully for a moment—
Could you handle a shave yourself, maybe?
I think maybe I could.
I see you go reddish in the beard?
When it comes through, yeah. I’m a gingerbeard.
I’m sorry for your troubles, John.
———
They sit together by the fireplace. The wind is high and plays oddly in the chimney. His heart stirs and searches for home again. On a sour, lonesome note the air moves through the hollows of the chimney and the house; the old house sighs and breathes. He sits inside this heaving thing, this working lung—how the fuck has he got here, and why? Cornelius slowly turns one thumb about the other and looks at him.
Would you be a saddish kind of man, John?
He answers in all the truth he can muster—
As a matter of fact, I don’t think I’ve ever been happier.
Then what’s wrong with you?
I suppose I’m afraid.
Afraid of what?
That all this happiness is going to rot my fucking brain.
Cornelius grins, stretches, rises.
Would you eat, maybe?
You know I think maybe I would.
Right so.
Cornelius goes to his cupboards and roots out a wheel of black pudding the size of a fat toddler’s arm.
Cornelius?
But he moves with such dainty grace about the kitchen it’s hard to speak against him. Like a small bear on casters he moves. He puts a pan on the stove. He cuts a chunk of lard in. The hot Zs of the sizzle come up to fill the room. He slices up the black pudding and sets the slices on the teeming fat. Watching this routine makes John feel calmer somehow. There is blood and smoke on the air. Cornelius fills the kettle and sets it to boil. He is strangely mothering in his movements. As in men who live alone. He arranges everything neatly and flips the slices of pudding over and John’s mouth cannot but water.
You know I don’t eat this stuff?
Never?
Not for fucking years.
He smiles and sets a place with care and plates the food and serves it with slices of bread cut thickly from the pan and a soft butter spread over.
Now for you, he says.
Jesus Christ, John says.
He eats the food. The spiciness, the mealiness, the animal waft—it’s all there in the history of his mouth, and he is near to fucking tears again. The tea is strong and sweet and tastes of Liverpool.
Would you believe, John, that my father lived in this house till he was eighty-seven years of age?
How’d you get to be eighty-seven up a wet hill in Mayo?
He neither drank nor smoked.
I’m packing away all that myself.
I drink, John. I smoke. And I tup women.
Oh?
When I get the chance.
Cornelius slowly teases out the knuckles of one hand and then the other.
But you see what my father had was great intelligence.
That would help.
Oh he was a wiley man, John.
He was fucking what?
He was wiley.
What the fuck is wiley?
He was full of wiles, John.
He was full of fucking what?
He had a wiliness.
Oh…Like in he was canny?
Exactly so.
Okay. So now I have it. But tell me this, won’t you—how can you have a windy fucking moor that’s wiley?
Hah?
How can you have a wiley fucking moor?
A wiley…
He sings it for him in a witchy screech—
Out on the…wiiiley…windy moors…
What’s it you’re saying to me, John?
The Kate bloody Bush song!
Kate Bush?
Cornelius shakes his head.
I knew a Martin Bush, he says.
Oh?
Belmullet direction but long dead and God rest him, poor Martin.
Any relation?
To who?
To Kate bloody Bush!
I didn’t know a Kate. Could she have been a sister?
She might well have been.
No…I knew a Martin.
And was he wiley?
If there was one thing he wasn’t was wiley, John.
Oh?
Poor Martin was an inordinately stupid man. He could barely tie his shoelaces.
A ha’penny short?
Ah listen. Martin kept animals had more wile in them.
What kind of animals?
He’d sheep. A few cattle, I suppose. Though they’d have been wind-bothered up that way.
They’d have been…
Bothered, John. By wind coming in. The way it would unseat cattle.
Unseat them?
Cornelius lowers his sad eyes—
In the mind.
You mean you’d have a cow’d take a turn?
Cornelius squares his jaw.
Do you realise you’re looking at a man who’s seen a cow step in front of a moving vehicle? Purposefully.
On account of?
Wind coming easterly. That’s the kind of thing that can leave a beast beyond despair. Because of the pure evil sound of it, John. The way it would play across the country in an ominous way. An easterly? If it was to come across you for a fortnight and it might? Sleep gone out the window and a horrible black feeling racing through your fucken blood. Day and night. All sorts of thoughts of death and hopelessness. This is what you’d get on the tail end of an easterly wind. Man nor animal wouldn’t be right after it.
John pushes back his plate and sups the last of his tea and idly twirls the rind of the black pudding about the dull silver of the tines of his fork.
Cornelius?
Yes, John?
Am I alive and not dreaming?
He taps once and sharply the fork on the edge of the table for tune—it rings cleanly.
———
He walks a circuit of the O’Grady yard. He is high anxious again. His fucking jailyard. He circle
s and twists like an aggravated goose. Energy is the difficulty always. Too much of. An excess of. Flick out these fingers and they might shoot beads of fire. One neurotic foot in front of the other, and circling—what you do is you keep moving. He limps and he stumbles—no stack-heeled Harlem glide is this—and his bones ache; the sky above is grey and the wind moves the clouds over the bleak hills and the fall-away fields. The stone walls drunkenly wander the hills on unmentionable escapades. All is pierced with anxiety and dread. It’s the place of the old blood and it has too a sexy air.
The sexy airs of summer.
From who and where was that? At difficult angles across the hills the grey sheep move. They drift unpredictably like the turns of his own dark, glamorous mind. The past is about, too, but now it’s the more recent past, and he imagines the salve again of (oh-let’s-say) heroin, and how might that feel, John? To fall into that dream again—to be in the arms of the soft machine again—and to have that deeper quiet and space again. Morpheus, the dream. Noise is the fucking difficulty always. The excess of. The wind licks out the corners of the yard—its tongues move in green darts and lizard-quick. Sexy airs. Wasn’t it from Auden? The wind speaks, too, and in urgent whispers. News from far-out? Or from close-in? He shakes his head as he walks and circles the yard, and he notes from the corner of his eye the presence of Cornelius by the farmhouse door, leaning against the jamb, and his eyes are vast with pleasantness. The arms folded. The bull’s head inclined. The expression of great interest.
John?
Yes, Cornelius?
You know what I’d wonder sometimes?
What’s that?
If I amn’t half a blackman.
———
Cornelius carries with prim importance two shaving bowls and two razors. They climb to a tin-sided outhouse built into the rocks of the hill. The outhouse lacks a door and John can see down the country as the sky moves its clouds along and the sun appears and it’s trippy now in the sunburst. The fields are lit and lifting. It’s the hour for a shave and a philosophic interlude.
A black, Cornelius?
Is fucken right.
I think I see where you’re coming from.
Cornelius turns his throat and jerks the head curtly.
I’m talking if we were to go way back, he says. I’m talking from the south.
Cornelius rinses off the razor and shakes it dry. He slaps his face to get the blood back in. The blood comes hotly in a rush to enliven the stately face. He leans against the rock and looks out on the freshening day as if it might just about contain him.