by David Keenan
You’re seriously talking about speaking to the dead, I says to him, and he says to me, I do it all the time, inside my mind. Okay, so okay. How do we do this?
We need a circle, he says, plus we need people. Five is best. Two and two and one. I’m the one, he says. You’re the two and two. Who the fuck am I going to ask to do this? I can’t ask any of The Boys because they’ll think I’m mental. Besides, who knows what Tommy might say? Okay, so Barney I can trust, and what about his wee bird Robin, she’s got him burning the joss sticks in the shop this weather, so she’s probably into all this shite as well. Then I mind Beavis, our wee fucking comic book genius. That’s us, two and two. Of course, I will need to tell them that I will have to fucking execute them with extreme prejudice if they reveal anything about what goes on, but I’m sure they’ll understand.
*
What do you call
two Irish three-speeds?
Patrick
Fitz-
gerald,
an Gerald
Fitz-
patrick,
ha ha, fucking fruit merchants.
*
A week later we meet up at the shop, after hours, and Wee Robin locks the door and gets one of her joss sticks going and we dim the lights and everybody sits round the table in a circle
if any cunt can jimmy the gates of heaven, it’s that wee bastard Tommy, Barney says to us. Shoosh, Wee Robin says to him, we’re trying to get the atmosphere going here. We put our hands on the table so as our fingers are touching. Miracle Baby closes his eyes but I keep mine open. I’m watching everything in the room and I’m looking for signs. But nothing happens. You can hear the traffic outside. People coming and going in the street. I look at Miracle Baby and at first I’m like, for fuck sake, no way, he’s got the ectoplasm coming out his neb, but then as I realise it’s probably just snot, he opens his eyes, and he says to us: he’s here. Tommy’s here, he says.
Everybody looks around them. Not here, Miracle Baby says: here. And he points to the table in front of us where we’ve got one of they Weegie boards set up. He’s trying to communicate, Miracle Baby says. You can break the circle now, he says. I thought you were never supposed to break the circle but I do as I’m told cause we’re in the spirit world here, after all.
Okay, Miracle Baby says, everybody put a finger on the speller. Then let him talk. We put our fingers on this heart-shaped wooden speller. And the blasted thing starts moving. And it’s not as if anybody is pushing it. It’s more like it’s hovering, like it’s floating back and forth, across the letters, though unfortunately it’s just talking rubbish and nonsense words and making no sense whatsoever. Ah, we’re bollocksed, Barney says, this is pathetic, so it is. Wait, Beavis commands him. He’s sitting there with his curly hair and his wee round glasses on and he’s starting to take charge. You don’t understand the spirit world, he says to us. You have no experience of travel in alternate dimensions, he says. Youse need to give it time. The recently deceased are unused to walking in the ways of the spirit. That’s what he says to us. Imagine your own first primitive attempts at speech, he says to us. Let the words form, in time.
We settle back down. Everybody is silent. Watching the speller move this way and that. Everybody is silenced. As it stops. And it starts again.
>:- w-h-i-t-a-b-o-o-t-y-e -:<
Barney laughs. That’s fucking Tommy alright, he says, and he still can’t spell to save his fucking life.
Tell him we’re grand, I says. Answer him. Sure, we’re grand, Miracle Baby says to him. How are you?
>:- g-r-a-n-t-i-d -:<
He’s grand, Barney says. He’s saying that he’s grand. How can the wee bastard be grand? He’s just died. Ask him how it goes in heaven, Wee Robin says. What’s it like in heaven, Tommy? Miracle Baby asks him.
>:- i-t-g-o-s-w-i-t-h-u-t-b-e-i-n-g -:<
What?!
then
>:- a-m-l-o-v-e-i-n-t-h-e-a-n-g-l-e-s -:<
The angels, he’s fucking getting off with the angels, Barney bursts. This is fucking Tommy for sure.
But that’s not what he says, I says to them. He says: I am love in the angles. He says: in heaven it goes without being. Maybe it’s us that don’t understand. Then Beavis asks him a question. Tommy, he says to him, what is it like to die?
The heart-shaped speller stops moving. It just sits there and vibrates on the spot. I think to myself, he shouldn’t have asked him that. We’re going to lose him. But then he’s off. The speller starts moving in these wee delicate loops, in these wee circles, spinning from one letter to the next. The room starts to get fuzzy. Then I hear that fucking music. That crackling hissing music like it’s come in out the past. That music that I heard before. And I see what he’s doing. I’m watching our hands, all moving together, all coordinated, and it’s like a dance. And I see what he’s saying. I watch it come alive in front of us. Then I hear it, and there’s no mistaking
>:- m-a-k-e-l-o-v-e-t-o-l-i-f-e-l-e-t-l-i-f-e-m-a-k-e-l-o-v-e-t-o-y-o-u -:<
He’s singing a Como number up in heaven. What a chanter. Then I think to myself, it’s so like our Tommy. Even when he was in the hospital and you were trying to get a straight answer out him, even then he’d be trying to seduce you. Now here he was, in heaven, with all the answers at his fingertips, and it was the exact same fucking story.
*
I wait for Kathy outside the Europa every night for a week and then I walk into the reception and ask for her. I don’t recognise any of the security guards but the wee bird Sharon that had arranged the flowers for me and had given me the blank note was still on reception. Hello, stranger, she says to me. Is Kathy around? I says to her. Kathy doesn’t work here anymore, she says to me. Didn’t she tell you? We had a wee bit of a falling-out, I says to her. The end of the affair, she says. She’s left a lot of clients jangling, she says to me. A true heart-stealer, eh?
What do you mean, clients? I says to her. Sure, you don’t have to pretend with me, she says. I knew what was going on. There was no judgement. I helped her out. We’re all adults here, after all. Naw, I says to her. You don’t understand, love. We were having a love affair, I says to her, there was no money changing hands. Lucky you, she says to me, and she winks.
What the actual fuck; Kathy was on the game. Who the fuck else was she sleeping with? Was Tommy paying her? How did he get involved? And what about all the fucking press and politicians that used the hotel? Was she sleeping with both sides?
I thought about the vision I had in Clare. Kathy gagged, and her man directing. He was pimping her out. But for what? For information, maybe. But who was he working for? I decided to sit down with Barney and tell him everything.
I tell him about sleeping with Kathy at the Europa. About seeing Tommy in there once. About finding out she was a prozzer. Then I tell him that Miracle Baby sent me a message, a vision, to my mind, showing her man Davy, or was it Tommy, and your man Del Brogan, fucking her, I think. Visions, you can’t trust fucking visions, that could mean anything, Barney says to me, that could mean that he’s just a pervert what gets off on people fucking his wife. Do you know what they call that? Barney says to me. That’s what they call a plamf. What are you talking about? I says to him. A plamf is somebody that sniffs dirty knickers, what you’re trying to mean is a cuckoo. The fuck’s a cuckoo? Barney says. That’s nonsense. Naw, I says to him. A cuckoo is what steals eggs from other birds.
That’s a fucking magpie, he says to me. Okay, so he’s a fucking magpie, I says, so fucking what, the point is that I think it all ties in, I think Tommy’s boasting about hitting this fucking screw and she’s reported it back to Davy who is a fucking plant and who told his handlers in Special Branch, who then told their people in the UDA or the UVF or the UFF or whatever the fuck ever that Tommy was their man and where to find him. It was a planned execution, we know that. Either that, or your man Del Brogan told her. Either way, he’s a disreputable cunt.
Well, in that case, that leaves us with only one option
, Barney says to me. I’m waiting for this masterplan. For this incisive analysis of my theory. Then he says to me, we just need to fucking kill every one of them. Thank fuck there is some cunt you can rely on in amongst all this.
*
We do it ourselves, I says to him. No point involving Mack or the high command. Mack’s too in with your man Del Brogan. We start to staking out the house, this new house that I had followed Kathy to, out Ballygomartin way. A few afternoons here and there. The blinds are always down. The only person we ever see coming and going is a wee old woman with a crooked back pulling one of them shopping baskets with the wheels. She must live in complete fucking darkness, Barney says.
That’s when I realise we’re being watched. Barney, I says to him, see that car parked down the road a bit, can you make it out? Barney looks in the mirror. Aye, I can see it, he says. That car was here the other day when we were here. Two people sitting in the front, just like we are. The fucking peelers, Barney says. Got to be. By the way, I gave your man Davy a doing, I says to him. I forgot to tell you that. I gave him a complete fucking pasting when I saw him beating up Kathy in a park. Quite fucking right, Barney says to me. Cunt had it coming to him. Nice one, Sammy, you wee fucking belter. Aye, but that’s not my point, I says to Barney, my point is that maybe they’re onto me because of that, I says to him. Maybe they think they’ve been rumbled. Maybe they think that I’ve figured out what they’re up to. We need to assume that we’re being watched, and at all times. What I’m saying is maybe we can’t just blaze in and kill them right off. Barney looks visibly disappointed. We peel off as fast as we can and we lose the car that’s following us. Then we abandon the stake-out altogether.
*
The only thing I remember about my grandfather, the only time I can see him in my mind’s eye, is when me and my ma visited him in the plots to hear that he was dying, on a summer’s day. He’s getting news from the doctor, my ma says to me (I’m just a wee wean at this point), we’ll go and we’ll meet him at the plots, she says. I mind walking up there, up this narrow path between the hedges, and the rocks in the ground, and the stones, and I could hear him from far off, from way down the bottom of the hill, coughing his lungs out, this horrible, tearing cough, and he was chopping wood up there, we could hear the axe going down and the cough and the axe going down again. And my ma goes over to him, she goes over there to touch him, but he looks at her in a way that pushes her away, a look that meant that she couldn’t come to him, and he just kept at it, the axe coming down, the paralysing cough, the axe coming down again, and my ma says to me, it’s a pointless cough, that’s the worst of it, and she shakes her head and she looks away but she never cried and I remember thinking, it’s chopping wood that’s pointless, Ma, it’s visiting your da in the plots that’s pointless, it’s a summer’s day in July that has no point at all.
*
Your man Del Brogan is going on tour, Mack says to us, what about that? We’re having a lunchtime drink at The Shamrock. Me, Barney, Mack and Fat Tam Fisher aka The Dark Destroller, is what everybody called him, on account of his laid-back ways, and this fella Jimmy The Grunt. All he ever did was fucking grunt. As uncouth as get out. Tommy must be turning in his fucking grave, I says to Mack. What are you talking about? Mack says. Tommy was his manager. Tommy thought he was a real talent. Fucking listen to that record they put out; it’s a stone-cold fucking classic. It should have been Tommy that was going on tour, I says to him. Tommy should have been on the London stage, never mind this fucking punk rock comedian with his Rod Stewart disco numbers. Hey, Mack says to me, easy. Your man Del Brogan’s brand new. Where did this cunt even come from? I says to him. Your man Del Brogan? Mack says. What’s with all the questions? Mack’s sitting there with his fucking long hair. He’s got a badge on that says Hawkwind. The fuck is Hawkwind? Barney says to him. Hawkwind’s a fucking group, you prick, Mack says. A fucking black nightmare, my friend. Sonic attack, he says to him. Barney’s staring at him all confused, like. The fuck is a sonic attack? he says to him. It’s like a bomb made up of sound, Mack says. That’s what you sit at home and listen to? Barney says to him. Aye, Mack says. They’re fucking hip. Are they Huns or are they Tims? Barney says to him. What?! The fucking Hawkwinds. Are they Huns or are they Tims? How in the fuck would I know? Mack says. What, Barney says to him, you don’t check to see whether they’re Huns or Tims before you submit to a sonic attack from them?
Have youse heard that U2? The Dark Destroller says, interrupting the both of them. My boy’s into them, they’re Tims alright. Was Perry Como a Tim? Mack asks Barney. You can bet your damn fucking life Como was a Tim, Barney says. He was a good Catholic. Never drank nor swore. Plus he was always faithful to his wife. I thought Como was a Jew, Mack says. Don’t fucking start this, I says to them. Como was never a fucking Jew, Barney says, he sang all those religious songs. All those religious songs in the fucking Hebrew, you mean, Mack says. He probably did that because that’s what they speak in Hollywood, Barney says. Who speaks in Hollywood? Mack says to him. The Jews, Barney says. That’s what the Jews speak in Hollywood, so if you want to get right in there, you need to please the right people and press the right buttons. Have you ever seen a Hollywood movie? Mack says to him. Are any of them in fucking Hebrew? I’m talking behind the scenes, Barney says. Don’t get fucking smart with me. Besides, he says, Como’s Italian. You trying to tell me that’s the home of the Jews? The Jews don’t have a home, Mack says. That’s the whole point of Israel. Exactly, Barney says. The Jews are exactly like the Catholics. So as even if Como was a Jew, he was as close to being a Catholic as you can actually be without getting permission from the Pope himself.
Catholics have got their own home country, The Dark Destroller says. It’s called the Vatican. The Vatican isn’t a country, Barney says. The Vatican is its own country, The Dark Destroller says. Its own rules and everything. Me and the missus goes there. You need a passport to get in and out. How many people live in the Vatican? Mack says to him. Couple a thousand, probably, The Dark Destroller says. In that case it’s not a country, Mack says, it’s just a state, it’s a city state. Same difference, The Dark Destroller shrugs. The point is, you couldn’t fit all the Catholics in the world into the Vatican, Mack says. Just like you couldn’t fit them all into the Free State. The Free State’s bigger than the Vatican, The Dark Destroller says. Besides, Italy is the home of the Catholics, we’re talking the entire country. The point is that the Jews and the Catholics have got a fuck of a lot in common, I says to them. We’re both up against it, I says. And that’s the point what Barney’s trying to make. Aye, Barney says. That’s right. That’s my point exactly. Como understands because he’s up against it both ways. This guy has lived it. So you’re admitting Como’s half-Jewish now, are you? Mack says. Jimmy The Grunt lets out one of his trademark grunts.
Listen, if he’s descended from The Bible then he’s got a bit of Jew in him, I’ll give you that, Barney says. My point is at least we fucking know where we stand with Como and your man U2. But these sonic attacks, my friend. I wouldn’t sit through one of them until I knew, for a fact, that it wasn’t the fucking Brits trying to erase my mind. Hawkwind are totally anti-establishment, Mack says. Fuck does that even mean? Barney says. Does it mean they’re not into the Queen establishing British rule in Ireland? Basically, Mack says. Now we’re talking, Barney says. But if they’re so fucking anti-disestablishment then why don’t we get them over here and get them doing a fucking sonic attack for us? Why aren’t The Boys looking into these fucking sonic weaponries?
Picture it, The Dark Destroller says. Como shops up in Belfast and the next thing you know he’s doing a sonic attack for The Boys. ‘Magic Moments’ reduces history to dust.
Everybody’s killing themselves by this point. You should teach your man Del Brogan to do they sonic attacks, The Dark Destroller says. Get him into a bit of the Hawkwinds for the tour. Fucking the Ra’s new secret weapon. I wouldn’t trust that cunt with a sonic attack, I says to them. The
fuck is your problem? Mack says. I don’t know, I says to them. I just get the feeling that he’s a fucking Hun in disguise. Sure, you can’t go around making wild accusations like that, The Dark Destroller says. That’s dangerous talk. And based on what? Mack says. Did your fucking Miracle Baby see it in his crystal bollocks? It’s just a feeling, I says to them, it’s just a fucking hunch. Somebody is feeding information to the peelers. That’s a fact. And whoever it is is also responsible for Tommy getting whacked. And when I find out who it is, I says to them, I’ll fucking sonic-attack the shite out them. Could just as easily be you, Mack says to me. Don’t fucking even go there, I says to him, don’t you fucking dare, I don’t give a fuck who you are but if you fucking say that again I’ll put my fucking fist down your throat.