Kevin Barry - City of Bohane

Fucker Burke could not take his jaws from the ground.

‘Pikeys, H! With a third the business o’ Smoketown?’

‘Just shut your fucking pipehole, Fucker, please!’

A demon vision was to be seen come nightfall. From atop the high dunes, led by Prince Tubby, came a line four-dozen strong of sand-pikeys, and they were armed for Feudin’.

Carried hatchets and iron bars and lengths of ancient fender and blackthorn sticks soaked in brine for the hardness and bricks and shkelps and rocks and hammers and screwdrivers and they carried these items with a lovely… insouciance.

Fucker Burke and Logan Hartnett kept to the rear of the line.

Fucker carried a forlorn and puzzled air.

Logan carried a length of rope.

The entire structure of the old manse had been scooped out to leave a vast and sombre space. From the limestone flags to the wooded vault of the ceiling was maybe a forty-foot climb along the rendered walls. The leaded windows were thin and pointed, stern as church, and of a dark, opaque glass. A mezzanine platform circled the room entirely, two-thirds of the way up, and it was reached by a pair of spiral stairways, set opposed to each other across the room, and the entire platform was lined with clothes rails, hundreds of them in dizzying rows around the circumference of the room, his ’n’ hers, and the rails were hung with all the colours – some seasons gaudy, some muted – of capricious fashion. Peninsula symbols marked the hangings that were tied to the oak beams of the ceiling. A great length of chimney breast ascended from a central hearth to the high vault of the room. A blaze of Nothin’ turf lengths burned in the hearth space and the flickers danced on Macu, who sat by the hearth, on a low settle, with her legs crossed, her slenderness unchanged, and her age showing.

Macu wore:

A pair of suede capri pants dyed to a shade approaching the dull radiance of turmeric, a ribbed black top of sheer silk that hugged her lithe frame, a wrap of golden fur cut from an Iberian lynx, an expression of wry bemusement about the eyes, and about the mouth an expression unreadable.

The room was lit, at Gothical intervals, by candelabras mounted agin the buff render of the walls on cast-iron brackets.

Gant’s eye was drawn morbidly to the bed space. It was tucked away in a nook down back, and was heaped with furs and rugs, and there was a headboard cut from driftwood.

Nausea sent a spike to his throat.

A single, enormous photograph was framed above the hearth – it was as outsized as its subject: a great Irish wolfhound of doleful mien.

The Gant said:

‘Who’s the dog?’

Macu regarded him evenly.

‘Why’re you back, G?’

He took to a settle opposing her by the hearth – he took to it before his legs gave out. He could hold her glance for just a moment at a time. Every gesture, every piece of weather that passed across her face was pain to him. He saw clearly now the age that had crept on. He saw the faint crowlines and the puckering that would tighten and dry out as the dreck seasons passed.

‘I can’t answer you,’ he said.

She had opened the door as to one expected. She stood aside and let him enter the great vault of room. He felt conscious of his every movement. He felt nineteen again, and he tried not to carry himself like a Big Nothin’ gombeen.

‘Dog’s Alfie,’ she said. ‘Was Alfie. Got a slap of an El train.’

‘Logan’s?’

‘Ours.’

‘Handsome.’

‘An’ stupid.’

‘Often the way those’d go together, Macu.’

The flicker of his humour he could see was a reassurance to her. But careful, Gant, he told himself, don’t go tossing out the wiseacre lines now; you don’t need to impress.

‘Look at you,’ she said.

‘I know,’ he said.

‘Where’ve you been, Gant?’

There was no quick answer to that. Except to say he had been to the darkest caverns, where ogres loomed.

‘Been away over,’ he said.

‘I know that,’ she said. ‘We’d have…’

The regal ‘we’.

‘… got word the odd time.’

He rubbed his hands together to distract them from trembling. Every word that spilled from her spun him back to the lost-time. It was better if he didn’t look at her – better to let the dream persist.

‘I moved around a lot,’ he said.

‘No settling in those bones.’ She was sly here. ‘A rez boy born true.’

He was sly right back.

‘Whiff o’ the campsmoke to a lotta blood ’round this place, Mac.’

The pale boy Logan had not long been in the Fancy’s ranks. He was tall, he was skinny, he was stylish. Vicious as a mink and cute in the noggin also. What you did, in the Fancy, with one you were afraid of? You kept him close, and so it was that Logan became a lieutenant for the Broderick Fancy. The Gant was wary of him and he set him the trickier errands. Maybe hoped he didn’t come back from them, maybe he had designed it just… Ah but talk to her, Gant, don’t let her see you travelling back. Don’t let her see the weakness of that.

‘See you got scary boys about the Trace?’

‘Norrie trash,’ she said.

All of the feuds in Bohane go way back, the Gant thought, as he sat there on the settle and dried out in the warm fug. Such a childish town.

He recalled the lad who was tarred and feathered on the dockside one night by Norries – it was the Gant found him, writhing in the black goo, a nightmare bird he had the look of. The lad belonged to the Gant and there was vengeance required. It was callow Logan was sent to take it. After the vengeance he took, there was even Fancy boys could not look him in the eye.

‘You know I wrote you.’

‘You know that I got it.’

‘Not just that letter, Macu. Hundreds of ’em. Decades of ’em, girl. I never did send ’em though.’

Logan was quiet-spoken.

Logan didn’t parade no Fancy-boy machismo.

Logan was… cooler.

‘I’ve seen him about the place,’ he told her.

‘Guessed you’d been hauntin’ the shadows, G,’ she said. ‘You were always handy at stayin’ hid… for a big unit.’

‘It’s a knack,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t look happy.’

‘Who is? In fuckin’ Bohane… You think I am?’

The dark girl he had known resurfaced, for an instant, in her glance but he knew now – he saw it with migraine intensity – that their time was gone.

Logan had dressed a little differently to the rest. It would be the flourish of a neck scarf maybe. Or a different cut to the boot. If everyone else was wearing a square toecap, nothing would do Logan Hartnett only to arrive into the Aliados in a winklepicker, and the sly puss on. The other Fancy boys would look at him, study him, see what was coming next. The Gant had the finest threads himself, of course, but he couldn’t help feeling he wore ’em like a turf-cutter.

‘I’m sorry I didn’t send you word,’ she said. ‘But what was I suppose’ to say?’

He remembered the way she had snagged on Logan. He could see it happening – right there in the Café Aliados. Logan down back of the bar, by the jukebox, summoning up a slow-mover of a calypso tune. He’d kick at the corner with his ’picker, a deft little toe-dink to take the life out of a maggot. Soon as they were all wearing winklepickers, Logan Harnett would be dusting off the square toecaps.

Nights, the Gant would talk to Macu about Logan. He sensed the double-feeling in her when he talked. The Gant could hide nothing from his own face. He knew that Logan would be meaner to her.

‘Macu, I don’t need to…’

He could not find the words. The Gant flailed in the strange and sombre room. She looked at him and held the look and smiled. She was beautiful but forty-three.