For the Good Times

by David Keenan

  Then: there is a shadow across the moon.

  What sorcery is this?! Neutrino cries.

  There is a shadow across the moon.

  Sunflower floats high above the dead oceans. Tongues of flame appear like a corona around its edges. Then the moon begins to sink.

  It begins to sink toward the horizon.

  Sunflower has the moon in her power! Neutrino gasps.

  Aye, and she would drown it too! The Anomaly says.

  The pair watch, agog, as the moon sinks into the sea.

  The moon sinks into the sea with Sunflower at its centre.

  The ocean opens to receive them.

  The waters rise up and flood the lands before them. The flames are smothered.

  The lands are swept clean.

  Silence reigns on the face of the earth.

  All Hibernia is at peace: drowned and with a silent moon at the centre.

  Look! Neutrino says.

  Driven deep beneath the waves the moon still shines.

  It shines up from beneath the waves and is reflected in the black mirror of the sky.

  The Sons Of Men walk the corridors of The Dead Zone: The Place Of Endless Echoes.

  They too wear a cloak of silence.

  All around them are the glass coffins of the heroes.

  The glass coffins all stacked up to heaven.

  Each of them now empty.

  The covers of their caskets the perfect mirror.

  All that sounds is the footsteps of The Sons Of Men.

  The footsteps of The Sons Of Men, receding forever.

  Next time: Into The Maze!

  *

  You told me it was me what gave you all those little cuts and what bruised your thighs, I says to Kathy, you told me it was me. I didn’t want to hurt your feelings, she says to me. By the shore at Carrickfergus, that’s when I says to her. By the shore at Carrickfergus was where I found out. The news that broke my heart but made me whole again. How can I explain it? How can I explain what it did to me?

  The tide is coming in and washing all the stones on the beach. The moon is rising up out of the sea. We’re stood at the very edge of the world, I says to her. No, we’re not, she says. Scotland is just over there. Don’t ruin it, I says to her. Don’t spoil it for me. And then I says to her, how did you get pregnant by our Tommy? She looks at me with a confused expression. What are you talking about? she says to me. And for a second it’s like Christ Jayzus Himself is holding his breath. For a second it’s like maybe I’ve got it all wrong. Maybe I am the father. Maybe dreams come true. Maybe there’s a simple way out of this. Maybe we can just walk away, the two of us. Maybe we’re in that song after all, that song by the shore at Carrickfergus.

  And she says to me: who the fuck is Tommy? And I says to her, Tommy, you know, the one what got you pregnant, my best pal, Tommy, I saw you both together. You really don’t know? she says to me, and she shakes her head. His name’s not Tommy, she says. His name is fucking Thomas James Kentigern, I says to her, and it’s written in gold letters on his coffin. That’s a s how you know him, she says to me. But he was working for the other side all along, she says. And with a different name.

  *

  Wait. I want to tell you the story of my spirit animal, son, which is a Harry the Hedgehog. It came back to me in a vision of my father, as to when a time he had found a Harry the Hedgehog walking in our driveway and he had come running in and with his eyes all gleaming he says to me, come, quick, it’s a Harry the Hedgehog, and years later, when I had forgotten all about it, my father, long after he had died, came to me in the spirit world, as a dream, and he tells me the information that he and my ma had never really understood each other, and I felt heartbroken and sad, and I says to my father, my father from beyond the grave, now, did we truly understand each other, Father? And he says to me, don’t you remember Harry the Hedgehog, and he points up, to the Milky Way, as a direction.

  *

  Why did Tommy get whacked? I never asked her his name. His other name. The name he gave Kathy. The name he was given by his handlers. His handlers, what a laugh. Who could handle Tommy? Because the reason that Tommy got whacked, the reason that I have come to believe why he had to be killed, the reason that I have convinced myself is true, is that he pushed it too hard.

  That would be just like Tommy. He went too far. He embraced the role a little bit too enthusiastically. The masquerade. Tommy played the game for all it was worth. No matter whose side he was on. You would think I might be mad. You would think I might have felt betrayed by the news that he had been moonlighting for the other side all along. But really I was in awe of him, all over again. He had every single one of us fooled, and on both sides too. But really he was fooling no one.

  What I really believe is that when he was Tommy or when he was this other name that I never asked, this name that his handlers gave him, he was both of them one hundred per cent. And why was he whacked? You’re asking me that? Here’s what I think. You can’t have agent provocateurs – that’s the name they use, provisional, provoking agents – out there fucking murdering people left, right and centre. I mean, okay, alright, when we were taking out some of The Boys on our own side then fair play to him, he’s just doing a clean-up job and cementing his reputation with the Ra. But then when he takes out that off-duty prison guard from the H Block, I think that’s what did it. His cover was too deep for Control. That’s the word Kathy used. Control. Tommy was completely out of Control. So as they had no choice but to whack him, is my theory.

  I remembered all the jobs we had done together. I remembered that thing in Dundalk. Was the whole thing staged? Himself up on the roof like in a fucking action movie. Me piling through the unmarked cars. Was he working for them back then? Does that mean they were all in on it? Did they set it up like a fucking stunt so as Tommy could go blazing through in all his glory? He loved his action movies, we know that. Did he talk the peelers into letting him set that one up? He thought he was a movie star.

  And what about Pat and Arlene? Was it Tommy that had Pat killed or did he know about it? Then I killed Arlene and her man. And that’s when it struck me. It was a fucking duet. Me and Tommy had been duetting together behind the scenes. Think about it: he makes a move, and then I make a move.

  For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Do you know that one, son? That’s Einstein talking. He’s talking about dancing. About molecules dancing and about atoms dancing, atoms dancing blind, like me and Tommy, dancing with our ballys on. And I remembered that note. That blank note that had been left for me at the Europa, that note that might have saved my life. And I remembered making love to the same woman, the two of us, in the same hotel, in the same time, and the same place, even though it’s all so long ago now. What a feeling.

  *

  Okay, what about this one:

  Paddy from Ireland goes for a job interview as a blacksmith at a farmyard in County Athlone.

  Have you ever shoed a horse before? the smith says to him.

  Sure, I have not, Paddy says, but I did tell a donkey to fuck off once.

  *

  The phone rings in the middle of night. This time I know what I have to do. What about you? I says to it, as soon as I pick it up. Then I sit there, and I wait. I sit there and wait for what seems like an eternity. Something is there, in silence, the whole time. I hear the milkboy out doing his rounds. The birds start to sing. And now it is the silence that is speaking, in the voice of my ex-lover.

  Tommy turned up to a meeting with Davy that Control had arranged and told him that his wife was a whore. What? Tommy told him that and then he says: we’re to put your whore wife to work. Tommy says: we’re going to put her to work and that ways we’re going to use this bitch for the information.

  Davy’s come home and he’s called me a whore, is what the silence says to me, in the voice of Kathy M. He says that from now on we are going to put it to some fucking use, it says. He says that from now on I would be wearing a device. He cal
ls me a dirty fucking slut, a filthy cunt, a little cocksucking bitch, and he slaps me round the face.

  I says to him, you’re a stupid fucking prick, it says, in the mocking voice of an ex-lover, don’t you know that whores strip off all their clothes? Where am I going to wear a fucking bug?

  I’ll force that bug up your fucking arse, he says to me, if we get any more of this talk.

  I’ll be taking it up the arse every night, I says to him, so that isn’t going to work.

  This silence, turning me on.

  You’re fucking enjoying this, aren’t you, he says to me (in a seductive voice, it says it, without speaking).

  My true nature lies revealed, I says to him. My true nature lies in a pool round my ankles. In a cruel voice now. The silence speaks in a cruel voice from now on. And then he takes out his cock, it says, then he takes out his cock and he beats me about the face with it. Then, silence.

  The good news is that you were a complete innocent, the silence of my ex-lover says to me. The good news is that if you were to spool back through those recordings made in that hotel room in the Europa, those recordings of all the times we spent there, together, there isn’t a single thing to implicate you. You never betrayed anybody. You gave nothing away. In fact your tapes were of no interest whatsoever. No one learnt a damn thing of interest about you in that room.

  Now, in a humiliating voice, it says it.

  It was Tommy what told me you had a thing for leotards, it says. He told me you had never had a blow job in your life, it says. He says to me, turn up at The Diamond on a certain night wearing a leotard and suck this bastard’s cock, or else.

  Because he wanted to rule you out, it says. He wanted to make sure you weren’t any danger. And you proved yourself not to be a danger, it says. Tommy was a danger. And Davy. Davy became a danger, it says. But you, you were never a danger. You’re not savage enough to be my lover, my silent ex-lover says to me, from across the years, now.

  I sat there on the stair, with the phone up to my ear, and it was as if I could hear all the way till the end of my life, and what would come after. You’re talking to yourself, Xamuel, I says to this silence, give up the ghost. Then: I promise to forget you, darling, it says, in a voice like an absence, I promise to forget you, in a voice like a long-lost love.

  *

  The last night of the Daddy’s Little Girl Tour and your man Del Brogan is headlining at The Shamrock. Look at him, Barney says, drinking before he even gets onstage. Right enough, your man Del Brogan is sat there at a table with a clatter of birds, throwing back the Bushmills and Coke and chasing it with pints of green. Your man Como would never be seen with a drink in his hand, Barney says, never mind chucking it down in full view before the show. We’re standing in the lobby with Jimmy The Grunt, looking through the door at the debaucheries. Doesn’t he have a fucking dressing room he can go to? Barney says. He’s probably skunked out his brain too, he says. There are boys coming over, slapping him on the shoulders and getting their photo taken with him. Who are these cunts? He thinks he’s fucking Frank Sinatra, Barney says, and he was one dissolute cunt, as we all know. What the fuck is dissolute? Frank Marby says. Frank Marby was there too. Mad Frank Marby was on loan from Athlone for a job. I think McManus might have been there too: bellend. Dissolute means that you are dissolved in booze, Barney says. Right, Marby says, right. Dissolute cunt, he says. Como never fucking cursed, Mad Frank Marby says, and a drink was never known to pass the cunt’s lips. Plus he was always faithful to his wife, Barney says. Then Jimmy The Grunt pipes up. He’s standing there behind the merchandise table and for the first time in living history he doesn’t just make this disturbing fucking grunting noise but he actually comes out with a fully formed sentence: youse are talking shite, the lot of youse, he says to us. None of youse have ever seen Como in real life, he says to us. The last time I saw him, he says, he had a fucking glass of whiskey in his hand and he was toasting the crowd, plus and he was half-blocked into the bargain.

  Everybody is stunned. Jimmy The Grunt is talking, and he’s claiming to have seen Como in real life, with a drink in his hand, and half-blocked. After a couple of confused seconds Barney shouts him down. Bullshite, when the fuck did you see Como? he says to him. At the Kelvin Hall in Glasgow, 1975, on the tenth day of the royal month of April, Jimmy The Grunt says, and on the occasion the crowd rushed the stage, he says to us, and when Como came back on to calm things down he was wearing a tartan bunnet and toasting the crowd with a glass of whiskey and he was very, conspicuously, half-blocked.

  We just stood there: vanquished. Fuck me, Mad Frank Marby says, who knew? You should stick to fucking grunting if all you’re going to do is go around slandering Como, you carnaptious wee bastard, Barney says to him, and the lot of us walk off in a daze. You fucking think you know someone, Barney says, shaking his head and pulling his lips tight like a maniac.

  *

  Time for the show, let’s go. Moira and Wee Robin have kept us seats down the front. Mad Frank Marby’s wife Sheila is there as well. She looks like that serial killer, Rose West, but then he looks like fucking Fred, so as it’s a good match. I overhear her talking to Moira and Wee Robin. I didn’t get Disney at all when I was a wee girl, she says to them. Disney just went right over my head. What’s happening with the shop this weather? I says to Barney. Truth is, I hadn’t been in there in months. Nothing much, Barney says, going well. Beavis and Wee Robin run it fine. She’s selling all them tarot cards in there, and them Weegie boards, and them joss sticks. Who knew there was such a big market for the future in Belfast? he says. I thought they’d all given up on it long ago. Who would have thought you would turn out to be running a fucking hippy empire? I says to him. Sure, you’re like your man Richard Branston. Mind that time we contacted Tommy with the Weegie board? I says to Barney. Fucking classic Tommy, wasn’t it? he says to me. You could never get a fucking word of sense out that guy, even when he had shoes, and a body. Never tempted to do it again? I says to him. Never tempted to break out the tarot cards and see what the boy’s up to this weather? I don’t think he’s interested, Barney says, and he shrugs. I don’t think he could be fucked at all, he says. The dead don’t want a fucking thing to do with the living, that’s what I think. All these tarot cards and these fucking Weegie boards are like torture to them. They can’t even speak the lingo anymore. To them we might as well be Pakis.

  But don’t you want to see if he’s alright? I says to him. Don’t you want to find out what it’s like in heaven? They’re good questions, Barney says to me, right enough, they’re good questions, but that’s my point. The dead can’t be fucked with all these daft words like heaven and hell. The dead are beyond all of that good-and-evil stuff. That’s Neatsy, by the way.

  What?

  This German bloke, Neatsy, who says that in the future all supermen will be beyond good and evil. In other words they won’t give a fuck. Wee Robin is well into him, that’s where the character of Superman comes from originally. I might have known he would be a fucking German, I says to him. But at least we know one thing, he says. Even the dead don’t lose their taste for Como.

  Tommy was like Superman, in a way, don’t you think? I says to him. What do you mean? Barney says to me. Beyond good and evil, I says. Aye, well, he is now, Barney says, but the thing about Tommy is, he never had an alter ego. And if you’re going to be a superhero you have to have an alter ego because you need to transform yourself into this other thing, this other character completely, this thing what you are actually not. But Tommy was always Tommy; think about it. Tommy was always on. It wasn’t as if he had to run into a phone box and change into a different costume. He was always Tommy, no matter what he was up to, Barney says to me, and then he looks me in the eye for a second, just enough to convey … something. Does he know?

  That’s why we’ll always admire him, Barney says to me, no matter what. I think about pushing it. I think about asking him if he knows. But then the music starts and your man Del Brogan is onstage a
nd he’s got a glass of whiskey in his hand. This cunt thinks he’s Como, Barney says. How quickly we forget, I says to myself, as your man Del Brogan launches into ‘The Twelfth of Never’. And now he’s singing about this love what lasts forever, this love what never dies, and the women are on their feet and they’re screaming and it’s pandemonium. The curtain comes up and you can see the band behind him with their second-hand suits and their greasy hair and the wee punk rocker on the drums.

  Then he’s into the usual numbers: ‘Maggie May’, ‘Those Brown Eyes’, ‘Hot Legs’, ‘My Wild Irish Rose’, ‘Come Back to Erin’. But then he starts to changing the lyrics. He starts to changing the lyrics and I’m looking round myself to see if it’s just me or if anybody else has noticed, but he’s looking right at me, your man Del Brogan is singing right at me, and I hear that fucking noise again, that fucking sound, and the place is darkened, and the band disappeared, and it’s your man Del Brogan in the spotlight and this noise, this slithering noise, and he is changing the words of the song, he is changing the words to match the song that we have sung, together

  Come back to the shore at Carrickfergus

  Come back to that fateful Carrick shore

  Come back to the shore at Carrickfergus, ocean

  And greet the girl who couldn’t love you more

  everyone is singing the words they couldn’t possibly know in a voice like distant thunder

  Come back to the shore at Carrickfergus

  And greet the girl who couldn’t love you more

  it’s not Tommy, it’s not Tommy, coming back. It’s Tommy’s daughter. Kathy is pregnant with a little girl. Daddy’s little girl, is prophecy, of course, why couldn’t I have seen it before? And now the tears are streaming down my face. Then your man Del Brogan does the thing where he sings to his heart and reality is clairvoyant, which means you can read it like a book.