Кен Бруен: A Fifth of Bruen: Early Fiction of Ken Bruen

“My mother managed to ignore you dribbling on the photo albums. She even offered to show you Raoul’s wedding album... and you asked, ‘If she had any good mortuary snaps’... God above.”

I tried to look cowed.

“Well... come on, Dillon, what have you to say?” she seethed.

“What I have to say... Mau... am... Marisa, I already said but I guessed you missed it in there. At the beginning it was, and what it was... was ‘Sorry.’”

Hands on hips, she stared at me. I was impressed with the amount of words I’d strung together. In light of my present state of non-health.

“Okay... Dillon. What is it you want from me? What do you bloody want.” So I told her.

“Two aspirin.”

Var... oom... hinges off the door. I knew she wasn’t gone to seek aspirin. Sometime today I’d have to see Julie. The best friend I had. The only friend I had.

“And there’s always Julie,” my father used to say... “You could do worse and, knowing you, you probably will.”

Parental blessing.

I think I’ve always known her. She grew up in our street. Despite hidings from her mother, I was the friend she got and kept. At twenty-nine now, I had a year on her and absolutely nothing else. She was 5’1”... dark haired, blue eyed, with a strong body as witness to a hard rough life.

“Never show them how they’ve hurt you,” was her total credo. It was said about her that she feared neither man nor God. Brazen was the common judgement. Julie encouraged that. She worked for a travel agency. For three years she’d been based in Greece. Hard years for me. I didn’t even have the funerals. She’d married a Greek, and this had lasted two years. Back home she kept her relationships on a fling and fly basis.

I faced a dilemma! If I was to see Julie, I’d miss the 6:15. Could I risk two days without attendance. My post contained the November Dead List. A “Who’s Who” of the local dead. Murder erupted in most families with its arrival. Resentments lived far beyond the grave. People were highly indignant about the company they kept... even in death. In-laws were a point of bitter feuds. The names of the dead appeared on this list, and masses were said for them. Families were highly sensitive to their names being linked to in-laws they detested. In Ireland the final leveler was regarded as a right chancer. The grim reaper had one hell of a cheek. Cemetery Sunday was the day to flaunt your status among the dead and in front of the living. The weeks prior to this were the busy season for the stone masons. Polish, improve, and sheen them headstones. My father was there, top-tenned. A list he loathed — “Compiled by gombeens for the benefit of gobshites.” I put it beneath the only photo of him I possessed... he glared as always. I tossed betwixt Julie and the funeral. Julie lost, so I went to see her. The travel agency was the principal eyesore on the main street. Julie took early lunch.

“The pub?” she asked.

“Sure.” She wasn’t big on the “how-yah doings... the how-yah bin.” She reckoned you’d get to that. She ordered Guinness and sandwiches. I nursed the drink. The sandwich was out of the question.

“Like that, is it?” she said.

She lit the first of what would be a chain.

“What... I’m alrite,” she said.

“Dill, you look like you’ve got religion or AIDS.”

“I’ve been dreaming of my father again. And then this morning, on top of a hangover — ferocious mind you — I got the November Dead List.”

She ate some of the sandwich. Another cigarette. I reckoned she was running the Irish belief:

“If your dead father

comes to you in a

dream, he comes for

bad news. If your dead

mother comes... she

comes for good news.”

“So, any show from your mother?” she asked.

“No.”

“Well, let’s get to it, Dill. What have you been at. Apart from minding the business interests of the town.”

“The funerals...”

“I don’t want to hear that dead stuff today. Sorry! I just can’t get into that. What else? Anything that doesn’t stipulate that friggin’ black tie of yours.”

I finished the Guinness, and my stomach eased. Not a whole lot, but the broken glass feel was ebbing. I told her about Marisa. The slight up-step in health encouraged me. The Maunsell Hill visit came out, including Marisa’s version of it. Julie whistled... low. I got some more Guinness.

“Okay, Dill. Do you want some advice, comfort, or a decent lashing?”

“A smatterin’ of them all,” I said.

She knocked the colour off the second Guinness. The head went way down. The cigarette took a hammering. Time to die.

“O-kay, Eddie...” I knew from the rare mention of my Christian name that this was serious business.

“This funeral crack is weirding you out. You won’t tell me what’s involved there. How much do I want to know, I ask myself. Most of the time the lights are out inside your head. You’re getting to be one strange fellah. I don’t care if you keep chasing the kinda women who put the ‘R’ back into reptilian. Will you come round to me after you’ve finished work?”

“I will.”

We sipped the Guinness dregs. I took one of her cigarettes. Her eyebrow raised a touch. She knew the crucified battle I had to quit. It tasted woeful. Thank God... nip back up on the cross for a spell.

I managed to get to work. The draw towards a dedicated piss-up teased and shimmered. The funerals would take a drastic beating then. Work it had to be. I bought the pack of cigarettes without too much of a struggle. Before hitting out that evening, I coerced myself to get some food down. Two eggs on a base of chili beans... hot as I could raise them. When I got to Julie’s, I’d be fit to kill for a beer. Whatever state the eggs had been in, they sat in dismay in my bewildered system. My breath would oil hinges. Only as I prepared to leave did I notice the small yellow envelope... match the eggs I thought.

“Sorry... will you meet me on Friday at 8? I’ll wait on the Weir Bridge .

Love in warmth, Marisa .”

The makings of a haiku, her...

eggs in chili

love in warmth

Now... beat well.

I passed O’Malley outside a pub. He was footless. He muttered a string of obscenities, and I’m not positive, but I thought I recognised “Bollix” in there somewhere.

I smiled in what I think they call fellowship. I figured he was not the person to lay my haiku on. I think the seventeen-syllable requirement might have thrown him. Julie answered on the first ring. She was wearing a grey faded track-suit. Dressed to run, I thought.

“Beer or what?” she asked.

“Oh, beer, I’m chili-d out.”

She handed me a stein... relic of her travels, and I gave her Marisa’s note. She snorted. I drank — deep. I repeated the haiku. “That’s atrocious,” she said. The note... the haiku? Both I guess.

“I have Chesterton for you,” she said. I read:

“There are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematicians that four is twice two is two thousand times one.”

She sat on the floor where I had half-folded. Her hand moved along the inside of my thigh. Just that and I was sparked. I kissed the top of her head... fresh washed hair... lemon fragrance. She eased the zipper on my jeans, and her hand went inside. I moved direct to ready.

“You’re sure ready?” she said.

I turned and she lay back. Sliding the tracksuit bottom off, she gave a rare and rarer smile.

In Irish style, we got to bed after. I sat, half-propped with beer, a cigarette, and Julie... not necessarily in that order.

“Care,” she said, “is the difference between sex and making love.”