by Kevin Barry
Doctor Carl O’Connor, he says, rather grandly, and presents a firm, clean shake.
Our problem here, he whispers, and I speak from harsh experience, Kenneth, is the lip. I mean take the continental. The continental will enjoy a glass of wine with his supper and some pleasant conversation and then very happily go home for the evening. But the Irishman is familiar always with the concept of the lip. Are you with me?
I think I am.
The Irishman will have a glass of wine with his supper and it will be lovely but then he will say, oh fuck me now anyhow! Oh Jesus Christ almighty! I have the fucken lip on me now! And that’ll be it for the night, Kenneth. He is gone.
You mean there’s no “off” button?
Precisely so.
The night fractures and folds in.
———
There is a hefty chap with a voice that sounds like gravel in a bean can, and he has only the one ear.
What’s happened your other?
A badger got it, Ken.
Oh?
I was put out of my own mother’s house on account of drink and the false accusation that I had masturbated into the fireplace after she had gone to bed one night. I had nowhere left to live. This went on for five months. May to September.
Like a romance.
It was no romance, Ken. I was sleeping in sheds. I was sleeping in the car park of the Regional Hospital. I got rickets and a bleeding ulcer out of it. I could keep down nothing stronger than milk.
You’re not doing so bad now.
Well. Wait till I tell you. It was the way the ear went on me that turned my entire life around like a miraculous transformation. You might think there was drink involved but there was no drink involved. What was involved was buck fucken madness. On the night of the badger.
They move in shadows, don’t they?
Well this is it, Ken. But if I hadn’t come through that dark night in that field I wouldn’t be stood here talking to you now.
———
Bodies move; the night shifts.
Someone sings a bit from the Beach Boys for half a minute—
Well it’s been building up inside of me
for oh, I don’t know how long.
Which is all he fucking needs, and for a moment the pressure of his sadness is vast on the note that holds.
Are you not so great in yourself, Kenny?
No, I’m not so great.
I thought as much.
He sits tightly in a corner and keeps his eyes down. The measure of the note that holds is brokenheartedness. Bodies sway; teeth sing. Smiles twist on gappy mouths. Heavy scowl lines show by the grimace and the grin. He watches a mandolin player collapse into himself and get carried out sideways.
Argument goes through the musicians like fire.
The burly landlord says—
Right. Be done with ye. A pack o’ cunts.
And he turns on the radio instead.
Kate Bush is away on her wiley fucking moors still.
He calls to the landlord—
What’s the station?
Luxy.
They like their K-K-Kate Bush.
Cornelius passes by and bites a woman’s neck as he passes and she squeals and slaps.
Now, Cornelius says. Aren’t you delighted?
The night fractures; it folds in.
There is wild talk that the singer Ray Lynam might show—he is known to be in the vicinity.
———
An older lady sits and clings to him for a while, auntishly. She carries a waft of marmalade and brandy. She tells him that she is out with the sister—her bird-like fingers claw at his forearm—that she hasn’t talked to the sister in nine years, a nine years that is now lost to them—her nails dig into his skin—and there is no sign of a thaw—none whatsoever—and what it all goes back to is that she came down pregnant, the sister, and I said a stupid thing. Sometimes, Ken, a stupid thing can be a true thing but even so you shouldn’t say it. I said is the child his? Referring to Ronnie. Well. Six months later didn’t the yellow-faced child step out from her. And there was no prizes for guessing where that came from. Out of him from the fish farm. Out of him out of Belfast. Out of him in the denim the yellow child was spawned. Out of him with the big ignorant mouth on him and the same buck not knee-high to a fucken midget. And of course Missy hasn’t spoke to me since. But what harm? Is there call, when you think about it, Kenny, for us all to be mouthing away at each other like fucken goats, morning, noon and night? Would it not be better for us all to shut up for a while and ease off on ourselves? Hah?
———
He stands by the doorway and smokes and looks out to the tall pines that shimmy and flex in the wind and to the dark lake’s water as it laps. A pale youth stands beside him, a brightly eager type with his head inclined gently for questions.
This place around here is called the Highwood then?
No, Ken.
Oh?
The pub is called the Highwood.
So the place is named after the pub?
You could look at it that way.
———
Cornelius swings a great dog-faced laugh as he passes by. He seems to bark as he moves. The radio goes off again and everybody roars for a while and Cornelius is on the verge of tears he is so happy to see everybody.
Silence is requested and a shimmer goes through the room—is it Ray Lynam that’s in? But no, there is no country singer, it is just a young girl that sings out to the tips of her black hair, and the night folds in around him.
Too much.
He goes outside for a while. It is starless now and black and the sky is breathing. The tips of her song vibrate and strain to fill the room back there—he closes his eyes to hear it.
Well it’s been building up inside of me
for oh, I don’t know how long.
The past opens to him as starlessly and dark. He walks from it and towards the water. He goes for a while into the feeling of being lovelorn and younger. That green envy, that deathly swoon inside, and say it’s the year that you’re seventeen.
If he can hold the feeling, maybe he can work from it again and write again.
———
He talks to a very old man. He says that age can come and go in your life, can’t it?
Well, the old man says. I’m eighty-seven years of age now but I looked worse when I was seventy-three.
That’s exactly what I mean.
There are some people, the old man says, who are not only old at forty but they’re bitter aul’ cunts, too. Do you know what I mean?
I surely do.
But there’s no worry in that because they’ll all get the fucken cancer.
———
He drinks some more. He smokes what is passed to him. The young dark girl sings again and he sits tightly in the corner and he listens to her sing and he settles to the belief of himself as an unknown and safe here, in the Highwood, as this soft-voiced Ken, with his old-fashioned hair and his milk-bottle eyes, and a suit that sweats and itches and smells of dogs, rain and coalsmoke.
He drinks a white spirit that is passed to him—by the fiery bead it goes down—and Cornelius swings by, madly grinning and able—
Cornelius in a burly fast Cornelius-type rush
—and he says hush! He says hush now, everybody, hush, for the love and honour of Jesus. Ah for Godsake hush! I think Kenneth might have a song for us?
And the remarkable thing is, Cornelius says, he don’t stammer even the one time when he sings.
———
He is accused of stealing fags by a farmer.
The Gitanes!
They’re me own fucking Gitanes!
You’re only a stoaty cunt, the farmer says.
He is pinned to the wall—the farmer’s great knuckly paw presses hard against a reedy art college chest.
You’re only a long yella fucken stoaty cunt!
He shucks from the paw and screams—
Who’s ever he
ard of a sheep farmer smoking fucking Gitanes?
The farmer falls to one knee like an old crooner and shows his palms in a gesture of injured righteousness just like Levi Stubbs out of the Four Tops and goes oddly falsetto—
I do smoke the fucken Gitanes! he cries on the high note.
And Levi Stubbs’ tears run down his face.
———
Beyond the high window the sky moves its clouds and now clearly the night by the silver of its starlight shows—
The sceptred tops of the moving pine.
The shadow of a mountain as it reaches darkly for the sky.
———
He is called a stoaty cunt and a lying cross-eyed cunt and a Jew-nosed cunt and an English cunt, an English cunt, an English cunt.
The night folds in.
He drinks the white spirit and he smokes and he sings.
———
And now he is among the trees. He believes that he can talk to her across the night and trees. He tells her that he loves her. He says that he sees her sometimes in faces that pass by. He says that when he is near the sea he thinks of her most of all. He tells her what has become of him and I wonder can you see, he says, what might have become of us together. He says that he misses her still and badly and that he will miss her always. He says you were younger then than I am now. He says that he thinks of her as a girl still
my blue-veined love, my Julia.
———
Nausea sends him to his knees like a green-faced lout. He throws up in hot, angry retches. He lies on the bonnet of a car for a while and he looks to the sky above the hills. He feels the cool night around him as a second skin. He hears two men speak—the North-of-England is in their voices. He cannot see but can feel the way the men lean against the wall and smoke and talk and the way their voices gather thickly in the dark—
Kenneth? one says. Don’t think so.
———
He sits in the corner of the pub and holds himself tightly. Time is not fixed down at all. He might be anywhere in life. He might be down the art school. He might be down the boozer—Ye Cracke. Or in Hamburg where the brassers grin from the windows and wear army boots and black knickers and fire at him from toy machine guns as he goes past, turning the hoarse creaking rattles on the machine guns, rat-a-tat-tat. He smokes what is passed to him. The night stretches out its voices and yelps.
Keep it f-fucking down! he cries.
Kenneth, Cornelius says, would often take a sour turn late on in the evening. But there is no violent harm in him whatsoever.
A North-of-England voice is close by again; there is something darker here.
If you need a quiet place, John? Well there is a place called the Amethyst Hotel.
———
He walks through the trees for a while. He listens hard. There have been hangings from these trees. He can tell. He can hear the creaking rope and slowly now it swings. He listens to the voices that move through the trees. He can hear them clearly. There is a world unseen just beyond us here but he is not frightened at all. The voice of a girl moves through the trees by the Highwood and it is a long time ago but he can hear her still and her sex is a tiny, distant star—
my cold-lighted love.
———
The first of the morning comes across the trees. The lake hardens with new light. He wakes to a head throb—it hurts even to think. He cannot place himself, quite. It hurts especially to fucking think. He lies on his belly on the smooth stones by the edge of the lake. He feels great age down the reptile length of himself. He lies still and cold and listens to the water of the lake as it moves. He retches again. He has a pinhole in the centre of his forehead and all of the world’s pain screams through. He is sweating fucking bullets. A flicker comes from the night at last. He turns painfully onto his back and sits—he sees the empty boarded pub, a grave jury of trees, the morning patrol of skinhead crows. Accusation in the yellow of their pin-bright eyes; he retches. Accusation in the black gloss of their coats; he retches. The night in flitters and rags comes back to him; he groans. Arrows of light are flung through the pines. He hears nearby a deep bovine suffering. He turns to find the van with its side door halfways open and a pair of boots stuck out at odd angles. He goes on his fours across the stones. He retches as he crawls and by slow evolution of the species at length brings himself to an upright stance and walks. He sets one monkey foot in front of the other until the van is reached. He pokes his head in back to find Cornelius red-eyed, purple-faced and lowing.
Cornelius raises the heavy solid head a martyr’s inch and he looks with the most sorrowful eyes in the universe at his charge.
Fucken disaster, John, he says.
———
But of course another way of looking at it, says Cornelius O’Grady, is that things could not have turned out one jot better.
The O’Grady parlour room: Cornelius considers with happy eyes a mess of duck eggs.
The word’ll spread quicker now that you’re around the place again. That’ll bring the whole game to a head, John. It might be the best thing could have happened us.
He reaches a hank of brown bread to the yolk of an egg. He chews, takes a swig of tea, chuckles.
Because what the fuckers don’t know yet is that Cornelius O’Grady is running this game.
A sly grin; a wink.
Topping, he says.
John sits wretchedly by the fireplace; he shivers.
Cornelius?
Yes, John?
Did I really sing?
Cornelius widens his eyes to show fondness and awe; he whispers—
You were like a bird.
———
What fucking day is it?
The Friday.
I’m not even three days gone?
And doesn’t it have the lovely hopeful air of a Friday?
Cornelius?
Things are looking good for the island, John.
He goes outside to the yard. He throws up again. It’s the most extravagant gesture he’s capable of. The day has come up wretchedly to a hot sun. The sun feels like jealousy on his skin. Cornelius comes and throws a pail of water to wash the sick away. Now there is a decorous or priestly air.
High up, on a clear day, and all of Clew Bay is presented. The knuckle of the holy mountain is far side. All of the islands are down there and waiting.
Cornelius sets beside him a mug of strong tea.
I’ve no willpower either, John. But I’m not going to give out to myself over it. God or whatever you want to call him puts these kinds of nights in our paths to test us sometimes. We failed the fucken test. But do you know the best of it? We’ll be forgiven yet.
He is in busy whistling form as he marches about his business.
Cornelius? The last thing I’m in a condition to do right now is go sit on a fucking boat.
Drink the tea, John. You won’t know yourself from Gandhi.
———
Though of course why you might want to go out to a mean little rock of an island is no one’s business but your own. I’m only here to oblige you. We have always been an obliging breed of people, the O’Gradys.
Cornelius emerges from the house with a small, brown leather suitcase.
Supplies, he says. And if you don’t mind me asking, John, what did you pay for the island? No mind. Your own business and no one else’s. John is away to have a good long chat with himself outside on a wet fucken rock.
He shakes his head in wry humour and passes a bottle of Powers whiskey; it tastes like health.
The best of luck to you with it all. You’re going to come away from Durnish in three days’ time and do you know what?
A loving gaze—
You won’t know yourself.
———
The van drones and judders and turns now to show the glints of a grey sea. The sea is lazier than before. The knuckle of the mountain juts across the bay—
The holy mountain, he says.
Indeed, Co
rnelius says, and isn’t generation upon end of decent Irish people after trotting up the cunt in their bare feet with their tongues hanging out of their heads and wind taking skin off them and rain coming hard and mud and shite and heart attacks and strokes being took by the new time and would you hear a single word of complaint from those dear pilgrims, John?
Eyes raised in soft questioning—
You would not, he says.
———
The van stops on the coast road.
Ho-ho, Cornelius says.
Cornelius? Please. Let’s just get to the fucking island.
Patience a small while.
Cornelius kills the engine. He climbs from the van. The wind comes harder now from the sea. He gestures for John to follow; he does. They walk the scalp of a hill together, descending.
You’re not to be afraid, John.
They approach a great fall-away to the sea; far below, it flashes its green teeth, the ever-welcoming sea.
Right, Cornelius says.
He steps up to the edge; the fall is sheer—it’s a great distance to fall and to a certain ending there.
Come on, John.
He steps with Cornelius to the edge of the sheer fall; the wind pulses hard against them.
Lean into it, Cornelius says. Like so.
He does and he is held there.
Fucking hell…
Be fierce, John.
The wind comes hard and Cornelius leans in closer again to its great force; he is held there.
Cornelius?
Now, John.
John tips his toes up close to the edge and closer again to the sheer fall and closer.
Cornelius?
Go on.
He leans over the edge and the wind holds him perfectly there.
Do you see, John?
Maybe.
Do you see the trick of it, John?
I think so.
No fear.
Part Three
EVERY DAY IS A HOLIDAY AT THE AMETHYST HOTEL
The suitcase is ancient. It could be out of Lime Street station in 1925. Leather and belted; a stout little general. He wears the dead father’s suit over his high-top purple trainers. The sun is psychedelic in hot streaks across the water. He looks back at himself from the water’s surface. His eyes are glazed with shell-shock and paracetamol. The suitcase is by his feet and contains all of his supplies and somehow his aspirations. He worries a bit about this brown leather suitcase. Open it up and the past might tip out—