Kevin Barry - City of Bohane

‘But I’m wonderin’, Gant…’

‘Yeah?’

‘Why’s it you’ve come back… now ?’

But the Gant just smiled, and he began to speak again, softly, of the lost-time, of the old butchers and bakers who had premises once on De Valera Street, of all the shebeens and herb-shacks, of the life of the street as was. Emotional Dom Gleeson lapped it up. Big Dom remembered the dogs and cats of Dev Street. Dom would be happy to talk about the old Bohane until the clock came down the stairs, and there on the hardback chair he rocked to and fro, rhythmically, as he made notes from the Gant’s powerful recall, and the hunchback Grimes, too, was set adrift on memory bliss – ah youth; he’d been a puckish spirit in his youth, Balt Grimes; the hump hadn’t kept him from his share of tushies (your Bohane tush anyways tending to incline towards a bit of strange) – and the three men cut across each other, and prompted each other, and riffed; when a reminiscence got going in the Back Trace, nights, it worked like a freestyle morphine jazz.

Wolfie Stanners prowled an S’town beat.

Wolfie Stanners worked a vengeance plot.

Wolfie Stanners was amped to wade in the Far-Eye’s blood.

Drop the hand on a fiend’s clutch – in this town – and you’d best be ready to meet your manufacturer. But there was a kink in the plot – the sand-pikes kept their premises, and their leader, well guarded, and Wolfie would need help to get a clear shot at the dreadlock bossman in his dune-end fastness.

He aimed his bovver boots for Ed ‘The Gypo’ Lenihan’s hoorshop.

Afternoon, yes, in an April swelter, and this was as quiet a time as you’d get in Smoketown, but there was a scatter of degenerates around all the same – skin-poppers, tush-maulers, dream-chasers. Wolfie-boy as he made his parade of the cobbled streets breathed deep to take in their savour: Smoketown smelt of chemical burn, untreated sewerage and sweet chilli noodles. There were faint back-notes, also: pig, brew, oxen, coriander. The atmosphere generally was riverine and as Wolfie walked the wharf there was no small amount of poetry mingled with violent intention. Was the prospect of violence that stirred the poetics in Wolfie.

He approached a two-storey, narrow-shouldered, old town house, an S’town leaner, and he knocked on its door – it was quickly answered by the aged hoor-ma’am of the place.

‘Mr Stanners,’ she said.

The ‘mister’! To be addressed as ‘mister’ made him as aroused almost as Jenni Ching’s cigar-flavoured kiss.

‘Gypo about?’ he asked.

He did not make eye contact with the hoor-ma’am. Truth be told, Wolfie had a secret fancy for these handsome older ladies, and he was shy of them.

‘Mr Lenihan’s above with the girls,’ she said.

Edmund ‘The Gypo’ Lenihan had blown a gasket since the sand-pikeys arrived into Smoketown. Pikey himself, and proud of it, he was dismayed at the intrusion of the dune breed. Ed Lenihan was the oldest hoormaster in the creation. He had been trading in tush since the lost-time. Nobody knew S’town like the Gypo Lenihan. The Gypo knew the backways of the red-light streets, and the nuance of the double-jointed lingo, and the whereabouts of the secret passageways. He waited, smiling, as Wolfie made it to the top of the hoorshop stairs. The upper floor was given over entirely to screened slots with rush matting for beds. The girls present at this hour were using the afternoon lull to wax themselves. They squealed mightily as they waxed. The Gypo called to them:

‘Arra jus’ fuckin’ do it, would ye!’

He sighed.

‘I’d have a pack o’ gorillas to me name if I didn’t keep on top a things, Wolf.’

‘Runnin’ brassers ain’t no easy life, Gyp.’

They fist-bumped. They set to a smoke by the sash window overlooking the S’town run. The Gypo’s filmy eyes widened as the boy explained – in tooth ’n’ claw detail – his intentions with regard to Prince T the Far-Eye.

Ed Lenihan whistled low:

‘It’s a radical plan of action, Wolf. I’d say that for it. And while I’d be very much in favour, technically speaking, it ain’t gonna be a cinch to pull off, y’heed? He’s well guarded down there.’

‘You know the dune end, Mr L.’

‘I surely do but–’

‘You can get me close in, Gypy-pal. If we wait on the mo’, like?’

‘Could be a longish wait, kid.’

They talked it through.

‘Certainly they’re lowerin’ the tone, Wolf. Which is some fuckin’ trick in S’town. And decent Baba-fearin’ premises the likes a me own can’t compete. All I’m offerin’ is clean, fresh-shaven girl. Which ain’t good enough for Bohane no more. No, sir! Now we all wants to be ate alive by slave-girl lurchers! But still an’ all, Wolfie, you don’t want to go off on no loolah mission just on account of a sand-pikey–’

‘He dropped the hand on me clutch, Mr Lenihan.’

‘As you’ve been sayin’, boy.’

‘Jenni’s me all-time doll, y’sketch? I wanna start a fam’ly with the bint an’ all, like.’

Silently, the Gypo Lenihan tried to imagine the likely spawn of a Ching–Stanners union, and he shuddered.

‘That’s very lovely, Wolf,’ he said.

A strange moment, then: the boy-villain seemed to come over a little bashful. Stared at his bovver boots a pensive moment.

‘Actually, Mr Lenihan, that’s somethin’ else I wanted to ask your advice on, sir.’

‘Oh, Wolf?’

‘Mr L… You’ve run a share o’ Chinkee chicks in yer day, check?’

‘Certainly,’ said Ed Lenihan. ‘Our oriental is a powerful cut of a hoor.’

‘And what I wanted to ask ya, Gyp…’

A blush! Lenihan could hardly believe it – there was a blush on the demon’s cheek!

‘What’s it, Wolf?’

‘Your Chinkees,’ said Wolfie, ‘they’d a gone down from time to time with the, ah… with the carryin’ o’ childer, like?’

‘Of course. Any young lady can get herself caught. The precautions aren’t what they were, Wolf.’

‘Okay,’ said Wolfie, and he breathed deep, ‘so what I wanted to ask ya was…’

He pointed to his fine-cropped red hair.

‘D’ya ever come across a Chinkee gettin’ bred off one a these?’

Ah, thought Ed Lenihan, the boy has a brood on. He was young for that. But they know, sometimes, in Bohane, that they may not be long for the road.

‘D’ya mean, Wolf…’

‘Off a ginger, Gyp. D’ya ever come across a Chinkee bint gettin’ bred off a ginge?’

Lenihan smiled.

‘What is it exactly you’re asking me, Wolf?’

Shyness glowed all over Wolfie Stanners. Fear, also.

‘Could the chil’ not come out skaw-ways, Mr L?’

Sympathy for the little demon, Ed Lenihan found he had, and he placed a fatherly arm around Wolf’s shoulders. Felt a tremor in the boy at this touch, a recoil.

‘When yer lookin’ to start a family, Wolf, you just got to pack away your fears and throw it all to the fates, boy.’

‘But what y’reckon, Gyp? Would it come out ginger or would it come out Chinkee, like?’

As he led Wolfie back towards the stairs, with his hoors yelping as they waxed themselves smooth, he leaned in, and said:

‘Wolf Stanners? When any child o’ yours appears ’pon the face of the earth, I don’t think there’s gonna be e’er a doubt about it.’

‘Thanks very much, Mr Lenihan.’

By the doorway then, the Gypo consented to be the boy’s guide to the dune-end backways, and to get him close in on Prince T. Wolfie’s blackbird stare told him he had no choice.

And so it was that a lightness in the step was evident as Wolfie walked out again through the Smoketown streets. He didn’t notice the sand-pikey watches who eyed him from the doorways and the rooftops there, and who knew already of his intention.