Desmond Barry - London Noir

“Get out of the car,” I heard myself say, “I’m requisitioning this vehicle on behalf of the Irish Republican Army. One-Shot Emmet, they call me, friend — for one shot is all it takes.”

There was a big fat moon swelling above the gasworks, looking like the loveliest floaty balloon. The old man knew a song about that moon. I remembered it well. It went: When the harvest moon is shining, Molly dear.

Once I had heard him singing it to the old lady. One night in the kitchen not long after Christmas. Long ago. Or at least I thought I had. Then I fell asleep with my hotshot volunteer’s jacket pulled good and tight around me.

So off I went — puff-puff on the train. All the way to Epsom in Surrey. What a spot that turned out to be — a hotel, a kind of club for dilapidated colonels. How many Jimmy Edwards moustaches would you say there were there to be seen?

At least, I would estimate, seventeen examples.

Big potted plants and women like vampires, Epsom Association Dawn of the Dead.

Sitting there yakking about gout and begonias.

“You’re not very fond of work, are you?” says the boss. He had apprehended me sleeping under boxes.

I took in everything in the office. The barometer on the wall reading mild, the bird creature on the mantelpiece dipping its beak in a jar. Lovely shiny polished-leather furniture — with buttons.

“It seems quite extraordinary but you don’t appear ashamed in any way.”

I was going to tell him nothing. Mahoney — my officer-in-command — had always said if arrested to focus your attention on a spot on the wall.

He fired me. “Get out,” he says. Well, fuck that for a game of cowboys.

By the time I got back to London I was edgy and tired.

Outside a Wimpy, I saw a woman with blood streaming down her face being led away by a man in a raincoat. For no reason at all I stood there for a minute looking in the window of a telly rental shop, and there on the screen is this fellow saying: “I was just coming out of my office when I heard the most frightful bang.” The policemen were still shouting: “Will you please clear the area!” All of the pubs were closing their doors. I heard someone running past, shouting: “Murdering bastards!” I hid my face and found a hostel. The London Assignment was the name of my book. The book I’d invented to get me to sleep. I was on the cover in a parka — looking dark and mean. Behind me, a mystical pair of old-country hills. The old-timer next to me said: “What time is it now?”

It’s the time of Gog and Magog, my friend, when the cloud covers the sun and the moon no longer gives forth any light.

I’d read that in a Gideon’s Bible some other old tramp had left on my locker. He must have been unhappy for I could hear him crying.

I don’t know why his whimperings should have done it but they got me thinking about Ma and Da. I got up to try and stop their faces coming. Then I saw the two of them — him just standing there with his hand held in hers.

“Ma,” I gasped, “Da.”

They were dressed in the clothes of all the old-time photographs. There was a picture on the hostel wall of a dancehall in London and somehow it all got mixed up with that. It wasn’t a modern dancehall — one from the ’40s or perhaps the early ’50s. It was called THE PALAIS — with its string of lights waltzing above the heads of the fresh-faced queue. You’d think to see them that they’d all won the pools. I’ve never seen people look as happy as that. I could see the inside in my mind — palm trees painted over a tropical ocean and the two of them waltzing. Him with his hair oiled and her with a great big brooch pinned onto her lapel.

“I love you,” I heard her say.

It was in those couple of years just before I was born. In the time of the famous detective Lustgarten, when all the cars were fat and black and nobody said fuck or visited dirty neon-lit shops. When everyone was happy because at last the war was over. We hadn’t been in the war. Eamon de Valera kept us out of it. The old man revered de Valera. Talked about him all the time. He was probably talking about him now — to her. But she wouldn’t want to hear about history. She’d simply want to be kissed by him. The history of that kiss would do her just fine. She needed no more than that to look back on.

The doors of the dancehall were swinging open now and assorted couples were drifting out into the night in the loveliest of white dresses and old-style gray suits with big lapels.

Ma was lying back on the bonnet of a car. She put her arms around him and said she wasn’t worried about a single thing in the whole world. Her laughter sailed away and I heard her saying that history was a cod, that the only thing that mattered was two people loving one another. He asked her would she love an Englishman, and she said yes she would just so long as it was him. Which was the greatest laugh of the whole of all time — the idea of her husband, Tom Spicer, being an Englishman.

“London,” she whispered then, and whatever way she said it, it made the whole place just spread out before me like some truly fabulous palace of stars. Songs that I had only half-remembered seemed to fill themselves out now and take on an entirely new life as they threaded themselves in and out of the most magnificent white buildings of solid Portland stone.

A nightingale, I thought, sang in Berkeley Square and it made me feel good for I knew that Da had liked it once upon a time. No, still did.

“Don’t I?” he said as he tilted her pale chin upwards.

“Stardust,” she smiled, and I knew she meant Nat King Cole.

With the shimmering sky over London reflected in her eyes.

When I looked again, they were standing in some anonymous part of the city and it wasn’t pleasant — there was this aura of threat or unease hanging around them. I wanted it to go away but it wouldn’t. Ma was more surprised than anyone when he drew back his cuff and punched her in the face.

A spot of blood went sailing across the Thames. Faraway I saw CINZANO , just winking away there, on and off. On and off. On and off. On and—

I heard a scream. I woke up.

I didn’t manage to get back to sleep.

Noon, I went into Joe’s Café. There was only one thing and it prevailed in my mind. That was the dancehall whose name was THE PALAIS, with its colored lights strung above the door. That was my London Assignment. To, once and for all, locate that building. I swore I’d do it — or die in the process.

I smiled as I thought of Mahoney and his reaction. He was standing by the window back at HQ, with both arms folded as he unflinchingly gazed out into the street.

“You were sent over there for one express purpose!” he snapped. “And it’s got nothing to do with fucking dance-halls!”

I took out my revolver and placed it on the table.

“So be it,” I said. “Then I’m out.”

“You’re out when I say you’re out,” replied Mahoney.

I could see a nerve throbbing in his neck. Mahoney had been over the previous summer with an active service unit that had caused mayhem. He was a legend in the movement. His London exploits had passed into history. He would have had no problem coming over himself and filling me in. Taping my confession and leaving me there in some dingy Kilburn flat, with a black plastic bag pulled down over my head.

“The organization is bigger than any one man,” he said. “Or any,” he sneered “fucking dancehall.”

I finished my tea and got up from my chair, swinging from Joe’s out into the street.

Not this one, Mahoney. Not this one.

I sat down for a bit in Soho Square Gardens. There was a paper lying beside me on the bench. Looking out from the front page was a photofit picture of an IRA bomber in long hair and sideburns.