by Kevin Barry
We been through a lot, old pal.
Where would we even begin, Charlie?
Nights in Berehaven we kicked each other around the road?
Nights on the high seas?
The night at the Judas Iscariot?
Ah, don’t go there, Charlie . . . Please.
We had our good times too, Moss.
We did, yeah.
There were times the luck turned right. Hardly the arse of a trouser between us and we’d find ourselves in Casablanca. We’d find ourselves in Puerto Banús. We’d be atein’ rings around us in Marbella. There was a time the business was booming.
You know why, Charlie? Because if Irish people are martyrs for the drink, they’re worse again for the dope, once they get the taste for it, because it eases the anxiety, and we’re a very anxious people.
Why wouldn’t we be, Moss? I mean Jesus Christ in the garden, after all that we been through? Dragging ourselves around that wet tormented rock on the edge of the black Atlantic for the months and years never-ending and the long gawpy faces screamin’ for the light and the jaws operatin’ on wires and the pale little yellow arses hanging out the back end of us?
Dope be the only thing get us through, Charles.
*
A ferry boat arrives from the port of Tangier. Its tired crowd straggles through the terminal. It’s as if an ordeal has been passed through. The short crossing to Algeciras can play an odd music inside – trouble has passed this way before, and the old journeys reverberate still.
The men watch on as a new crowd starts to congregate – the ferry may sail again later.
Dilly Hearne enters the terminal and now she is among the crowd.
Her hair is worn in a bleached pixie crop shorn high and tightly at the sides. She wears vintage Polaroid sunglasses, a pair of men’s pinstripe trousers buckled high at the waist and a white zip-up Veja hoodie. She pulls a trolley case behind her. She moves inside an aura of calm – at twenty-three years old she is already queenly.
She sees the two men on the bench by the INFORMACIÓN hatch, the way that they scan the crowd, and at once she averts her face from them, and veers away.
She goes to the bar upstairs. She watches from there and she allows her breath to slow, or she tries to. Her heart slaloms and thumps in its cage. Her blood races. She watches over the top of her sunglasses –
Yes, it’s Maurice, turning his good eye around the floor, and yes, it’s Charlie, rising now, heartbreakingly, and limping slowly towards the hatch on his old drag-along step.
Okay, Dilly says, and she turns to the bar and orders a brandy.
Chapter Eight
THE JUDAS ISCARIOT ALL-NIGHT DRINKING CLUB
In the city of Cork, in January 2000
It was a little after 4 a.m. on a January night. It was in the long, cold sleep of the winter. The shapes of the city were blocked out above the dark river, against the moonless sky. On the southside quays only the ghosts of the place traipsed by the doorways or idled on the steps of the river wall with their stories of old love. The black surface of the river moved the lights of the city about. It was hard not to believe sometimes that we were just the reflection, and that the true life existed down there in the dark water.
At the Judas Iscariot, an illicit drinking den set back a little from the quays, it was an arranged knock, a coded knock, that allowed entry and you played out the knock in a few quick hard raps, with this rhythm, like so –
*
The captain of the ship stood behind the bar counter. He surveyed the place with tranquil smile. This was Nelson Lavin, of the gold tooth and the whispery vowels. There beneath the optics he swung out a slow, benevolent scan of the room –
The Judas drew a low crowd but not an unglamorous one. Night people. Scavengers. A criminal ascendency. They were arranged at low tables in the dim light. There was an aura of trinket menace from their neck chains in the light. Over the course of a long night maybe a couple of dozen hardened souls would move in uncertain fraternity around the pools of table light.
The inclination at the Iscariot was to drink steadily but decorously. Nelson Lavin kept a watchful eye that such decorum be maintained. He loosened the brass ring on his pinkie and circled it slowly and, that the night might hold on a mellow note, he rubbed a charm on the ring with holy fingers. But his gums were swollen, and this was usually a sign for Nelson that trouble was coming.
He looked slowly around the room and reckoned the names and familiars of the place, their situations. He brought a shine the length of the counter with his bar cloth. He leaned into sleepy Vincent Keogh, the house-breaker, who was swaying somewhat on a corner stool.
Way is things shaping for you, Vincent? Bigger-picture wise?
Skaw-ways and unpleasantly, Nelson.
Throw back the shoulders for me there, Vince, and look straight out ahead of you.
He scanned the bar again, smiling –
The faces don’t be right around here. This was Nelson’s belief. A townful of hawky-looking dudes with sinister chins and dumpling noses.
Steve Bromell, the cocaine pedlar, was staring in fear to the low tin ceiling, as though it might cave in, but Stevie looked scared at the best of times, as often with good cause. He’d nearly miss the paranoia if ever it eased off.
Two ladies-of-love; a ponce; a prince amongst bouncers.
Discreet people.
Charlie Redmond was drinking alone but for his demons at a crowded table down the back.
There was something to be understood in the Redmond glaze, Nelson believed, in the slow, dull gaze, and the way that he was with careful deliberation ripping up the beermats.
Hard faces; burnt eyes; shebeen hours.
The vodka that turned in Charlie Redmond’s long fingers made a slow, ominous swirl – the turning glass caught the low, amber lights of the Iscariot.
Nelson dipped beneath the bar hatch and crossed the room with a half-litre of Grey Goose – he laid his hand to the back of Charlie’s to still the glass, and he topped it.
You know they say that vodka is uncouth, Charlie?
I was dragged up, Charlie Redmond said. Side of the road job.
The glint of humour was a reassurance, but Nelson still had the swollen feeling about his gums.
Jimmy Earls, a brothel-keeper, sat heavily over a half of Beamish stout and sipped from it and followed it with a dewdrop of Powers whiskey. He moved his lips daintily as he recounted beneath his breath the litany of his bitternesses. Rita Kane, a lady of schemes, played out for the benefit of her friend Sylvia’s ears the details of an acrimonious split with Edmond Leary, a common thief, and Sylvia’s left hand reached for her throat and clutched it softly, an expression of distilled Corkonian dismay. Alvin Hay, once a boxer, in the far corner wept tearlessly, with the catch of his throat opening – this was the season his wife was dying.
Out front, a sequence of knocks came in the precise arrangement – the boy fetched open the door and heads turned slowly in the room to mark the arrival of Maurice Hearne.
A face to match the night on him as he entered, but he softened it and made smiling across the room to Charlie Redmond. Charlie stood to greet him, and the men embraced.
Trouble out west, trouble in Berehaven, was the word on the wind that Nelson Lavin had caught. Love trouble – the worst strain. He attended carefully with his cloth to the run and turn of the grain of his counter’s wood.
The room kept its breath. It held on a moment of violent possibility. Maurice sat in the chair opposite Charlie’s. He kicked the legs out in front of himself. Charlie rested his long, thin face on the knit of his hands beneath the chin. When he began to speak, there was a hungry pleading in his eyes.
Nelson considered the room’s resources should unpleasantness occur. Jimmy Earls was put together like a Victorian bridge but not a man of stout convictions since a brush with death the night a knife was bared in Cobh, a kidney scarred the result of it. Alvin might be useful, if the mood took him. The boy who work
ed the door was of an intemperately brave stock and could be a help. There was no knowing how the night could spin out. Discreetly, Nelson felt under the counter for the reassurance of his whitethorn cosh.
Outside, the wind was getting higher – this was at every fucking chance it got an operatic place.
The wind blew the lights of the city about.
The lights moved back and forth in a slow, narcotic swaying on the black skin of the river.
At the Judas Iscariot the two old friends sat and consulted each other. This was trouble of a particular timbre – Nelson Lavin could read it at a half-glance.
Jimmy Earls tiptoed his great bulk barside and by a flutter of his eyelashes summoned Nelson to a huddle.
You watching over?
Am I the fuck.
There’s smoke coming out the ears, Nelson.
Been trouble yonder?
In Berehaven. It’s reported.
On account of the beore?
Good-looking woman. In fairness. And fierce.
These were fabled people. These were tricky times. They were in a moment of dangerous splendour. The men were lizardly, reptilian. They wore excellent fucking shoes. Nelson carefully with Jimmy Earls kept an eye on the confrontation. It was a smiling one, yet, and soft-voiced. These were deliberate people. Why should they meet just here, just now? Maybe it needed to be seen, and recounted.
Charlie Redmond leaned in to confide. He spoke seriously, and Maurice Hearne leaned in and listened. Now he reached for Charlie’s glass of vodka and took a sip from it.
Covertly, with fear and anticipation mingled, Nelson Lavin and Jimmy Earls watched the show from the sidelines.
Way is they fixed generally, you reckon?
Not great, Nelson said. They lost a boat below last year.
Bother on the home front be the last thing they need.
These two went way back, Nelson knew. Barrack Street in the ’80s. A pub called the Three Ones. An eyes-sideways-in-your-head job. Charlie and Moss at the back table, barely shaving. Their dope stashed behind the cross on the wall of the deadhouse across the road. Younger fellas running it for them. He served Alvin Hay a Drambuie and said, friend, catch a hold of yourself. Life or death, each day has its insistences, and there is nothing we can do to gainsay them.
You can’t beat the machine, Alvie, he said.
Would he swing by the table? Try to get a sense of it? They were huddled close in and speaking with animation. Jimmy Earls stayed barside, sensing Nelson’s worry – Jimmy considered himself A Rock in edgy circumstances. Also, by constitution, he was out for the full of his mouth. He was fetched up another half of Beamish – it was Jimmy Earls’s life-long conviction that pint glasses were ignorant-looking. As the black stout settled, he took out his little can of 3-in-One oil from the inside pocket and added five drops – counting them off – to the glass.
Shocking habit, Nelson said, as he did every night.
It’s the lubrication is the only thing keepin’ the lungs straight in me back, Jimmy Earls said.
Now bravely Nelson slipped out and swung from behind his bar and roamed the shebeen floor. He took up a glass here, a glass there. He made a precise shuffle around back of the Hearne, Redmond table – they’d invaded Russia with less complication than the way some nights Nelson Lavin had to move around his own fucking bar-room. He tuned in, briefly, to their low, serious talk.
Can the liver and chips be bate for a hangover, Maurice? Charlie Redmond said.
Not if you were stuck into them above in the Uptown Grill, Charlie.
The Uptown, Charlie said. Regal premises.
Jesus Christ, Nelson thought – their devotion. As he sidled back to the other side of their table, he caught Maurice’s eye and enquired by a small shaping of the lips if a drink was required.
I’m good a while, Nelson. The night’s a pup yet.
The men continued to talk; Nelson returned to the bar and danced the deft and pleasing little move that took him beneath the hatch.
Well? Jimmy Earls said.
They’re talking about the liver and chips above in the Uptown Grill.
None finer in the town, Jimmy Earls said, and sipped his stout, grimaced.
I think they could be working themselves up to it, Nelson said.
Outside, the last few taxis drifted as stoically as old cows. The drivers looked lonely in the warm handsome yellow of their cabs. The squad cars, with disinterest, took slow turns about the town. The guards knew well of the Judas Iscariot and silently approved – it was a system of containment.
Nelson took the cloth to the bar’s counter and worked it with the turn of the knot and the run of the wood’s grain. He eyed the significant table and wondered how long before he might swing by again. Or maybe send Jimmy Earls by?
Jimmy Earls took the instruction eager as a small dog taking a stick and headed for the facilities. He went by their table unseen – even at twenty-two and a half stone he could disappear in a room the size of this, and smaller again.
As he went past, he heard –
What way did it happen, Charlie? Was there stuff that you said to her?
The moment was approaching. I could be as well staying in the jacks altogether, Jimmy thought, with the lad in me hand. The way things might be shaping out there. He stood and sighed and counted off the drops as they spattered the urinal tile. With the maggot in me hand, he thought – it’s the maggots is the cause of half the consternation around this place.
Nelson beneath the counter gripped the whitethorn cosh for its heft. There had been blood on the premises too recently, necessitating a conversation with the superintendent at the Bridewell Station and a month’s closure – Nelson Lavin had been a month at home on his ownsome watching Judge Judy at five in the morning. Jimmy Earls reappeared, noiselessly, in that shattering way of his. His hoarse, soft, whoremaster’s voice came across the counter –
They’re getting into it now, he said. Goodo.
The hot face on Jimmy read Showtime. Something in the air had changed. There was information in the room like a waft. It was strong as the singe of burnt hair. Vinnie Keogh glanced over his shoulder with morbid unease. Sylvia tipped the back of Rita’s hand – don’t look now.
But somehow all eyes were drawn to the table at precisely the moment Maurice Hearne picked up the glass of vodka and flung its contents in Charlie Redmond’s face. He sat there smiling as he set the glass down again and Charlie, who had not flinched, neither did he now react. He sat there perfectly still and he did not wipe the vodka from his face. He just let it roll down his cheeks and drip onto the table, his expression impassive.
Now Maurice addressed his old friend quickly, directly, neither smiling nor unsmilingly, and Charlie’s expression remained even and calm. Jimmy Earls reached for his overcoat set on the hook beneath the bar’s rim but as quickly he replaced it there – this night could be legend.
Nelson worked the bar cloth along the counter’s wood and grain. The gums were alive in his mouth. Over the motion of the cloth he watched as Maurice aimed more words across the table, and Charlie Redmond did not in any way respond. Was it accusation only that flew, or was there a sense of litany, an outpouring of long grievance? It was impossible to predict what turns might be taken when a woman got in the middle of things. He believed that both men had in the past killed. Jimmy Earls exhaled luxuriously to savour the trouble on the air even before it came properly to pass – I was there on the night of it.
What way you reading it, Nelson?
Jesus only knows.
You think something should be said?
You feeling valiant, Jimmy?
You could fetch ’em a drink over maybe? Innocent little face on you. Make light of it, kind of?
Maybe.
In the gesture there would be word that no harm was yet done. We can proceed gently even still. He took down the bottle of Grey Goose, picked up two fresh glasses, ducked and turned beneath his hatch. He reached back to lay the bar cloth over his fo
rearm. That proper fucking order might be maintained. He carried his saintly face to their table – Maurice leaned back, his eyes widened; Charlie allowed half a natty smile. Nelson primly but without remark mopped the few spits of vodka from the table, placed the two fresh glasses, halfways filled them and returned to the bar.
When he was behind it again he turned to find the men raise their glasses in salute to him. The room was in the grip of all this wonderfully now. Maurice Hearne and Charlie Redmond leaned in again to talk. Jimmy Earls blinked rapidly to pass an admiring remark on Nelson’s poise.
Outside, there was an eerie night music. The wind moved across the river, the wires swayed, and the lights of the city broke up on the water to mix their colours, but these reformed again sharply as the wind rested.
It was a little after five bells.
Now Charlie Redmond was doing all the talking. It was painful stuff, was Nelson’s read, and Jimmy Earls agreed – the way that Charlie’s lips moved, his sombre grey eyes.
A heart-to-heart we have on us hands, Jimmy said.
Indeed.
You know what they say about the beore?
What’s that, Jimmy?
She run the show. She call the moves. She name the moment.
They always say that about the beore.
Maybe it’s account of her way they says it. She be a put-manners-on-you type.
At the far table the men’s voices came up. The room as one turned to the voices. They were by no means roaring but an agitation was evident, and passion. Nelson Lavin took the whitethorn in his hand. He watched the situation stony-faced, like a referee. Their voices quietening again, Maurice and Charlie leaned in. Eyes elsewhere in the room averted. Jimmy Earls leaned in –
Will I swing past again?
Do, Jimmy. Take the feel of things.
Noiselessly the fat whoremaster glided across the floor. Jimmy Earls the brothel creeper. A very tidy sort in his great bulk. Aim for the porcelain, swing by the hard table. The creased fold thick as a pound coin on the back of Maurice Hearne’s neck – there was a great tension there, while a certain blitheness, unhelpfully, in Jimmy’s opinion, had descended over Charlie Redmond’s eyes. As he moved past their table, again unseen, he caught from the Redmond these words –