Kevin Barry - City of Bohane

This was the year all the girls in the Back Trace started to dress like Jenni Ching. They wore white vinyl zip-ups tighter than sin, or black nylon catsuits as though fitted with a spray-can, or gym shorts worn a handful of sizes too small over sheer silver stockings, and always there would be a set of custom steelcaps fitted to the high-steppers: groin-kicker boots for bad girls. They all started chewing on stogies, too. And in the Dev Street salons de coiffure, if you wanted a blunt-cut fringe while keeping some length and body in back, you asked for a Jenni.

Next thing?

The girls started to run in a wilding pack in the Trace. There were all-girl roisters in the midnite yards. You were a girl in Bohane, in the springtime of ’54, you had a shkelp in your inside pocket, and a stogie on the chomp, and you walked the wynds with that Ching-patented S’town glide. And you did not kowtow to no fuckwad boy-chil’.

Witness:

The girls skanked in the wee hours to dub-plate cuts blasted from the Trace rooftops.

The girls walked the snakebend roll of De Valera Street and they kept their mangle-dogs on chain leads.

The girls took from the malevolent surge of the river its defining taint, and fed on it.

Their talk travelled and lit on the usual nodes of adolescence – rage, lust, shame – but always this season, in the city of Bohane, it circled back to the one subject, again and again and again:

‘I seen her crossin’ the S’town footbridge an’ she got like a pair o’ wedge heels workin’ off a pair o’ pedal pushers in like a lemony, like a tangy shade, an’ she got like…’

‘Heard ya can get in the Ho Pee awrigh’ but not pas’ the caff bit, like. Y’gots to get the connects right afore they lets ya to the upstairs rooms, like, to the dream salons an’ Jenni’d be up there mos’…’

‘Is said she gots the Long Fella stashed up there an’ all, y’sketch?’

‘Gots him hangin’ on a string, like.’

‘Gots the Gant on another.’

‘An’ Wolfie besides…’

‘Is said she gots a dozen, maybe thirteen, scalp to the shkelp belt, check, an’ that’s oney wots known o’, like.’

‘She’s a size six tops, like…’

‘She gots the bes’ cheekbones in the whole o’ Bohane, like…’

‘An’ tell you this, heed?’

‘S’that, gurl?’

‘She’s a fuckin’ mega dancer.’

Ol’ Boy Mannion braved the top-floor suite at the Bohane Arms Hotel. He found himself at the foot of the honey-mooners’ bed. He stood up straight. He held his hat in his hands. He had brass enough – but just about – to keep his eyes locked on Girly’s. She raised a tumbler of neat John Jameson to her lips.

‘S’pose you know he’s gone fuckin’ loolah?’ she said.

‘Ma’am?’

‘As a bucket o’ cats,’ she said.

Ol’ Boy shaped his mouth sadly, and shrugged – it was not for him to pass remark on the Long Fella’s mental status.

‘I blame the thunderin’ rip he married,’ she said. ‘Gave him delusions of grandeur, didn’t she? Trace not good enough, oh no. He’s got to be up on Beauvista like some fuckin’ Protestant, ain’t he? Swingin’ off the rafters o’ that fuckin’ manse. And I wouldn’t mind…’

She paused, sipped.

‘Wouldn’t mind but Immacu-fuckin’-lata is the spawn o’ fuckin’ dock trash off a fuckin’ tuna boat, ain’t she? And the hoor of a mother she had was from the wrong end o’ the Trace an’ all, wasn’t she? With the smell of a thousand fuckin’ campfires off her.’

Ol’ Boy sighed.

‘Marriage is a hard old game at the best o’ times,’ he said.

She eyed him in silence a moment. Saw that he held yet her gaze. Tickled her upper lip with the tip of her tongue.

‘Course now she’s gone off in a hump and he’s lying about on a Chinkee settle horsin’ the dream-smoke into hissel’ like there ain’t no t’moro and the Back Trace Fancy is runnin’ around like a fuckin’ rat with its hole on fire.’

Ol’ Boy soothed:

‘The Hartnett family still has the runnins o’ Bohane, missus.’

‘Ah yeah,’ she said. ‘For now anyways.’

She laughed then, miserably, and wheezed, and paled. She said:

‘I see you got the Gant all over the paper?’

‘I’m trying to distract the town, Girly.’

‘From what, Mannion?’

‘From badness.’

‘Best of luck with that,’ she said. ‘How’s our tram comin’ along?’

‘To be honest, it looks like the NB is long fingerin’.’

‘Well, that ain’t no surprise, is it? When we been actin’ like a pack o’ savages! An’ you know what’s comin’ next, don’t ya? A royal scrap out back o’ the Aliados as all the little Fancy fuckheads try and put their call on the handle. Oh I seen it more than once in my time, Ol’ Boy. They’ll be pullin’ hair and gougin’ eyes all the way to the far side o’ fuckin’ Crimbo. An’ while they’s at it? Some wee bollicks off the Rises or some sand-pikey dickwipe outta the Smoketown dune end is going to march through the town and take care o’ business. Or how’s about some gang o’ wildin’ gals from me own fuckin’ Bohane Trace?’

‘I have been meanin’ to ask about Jenni…’

‘Y’know the latest, Ol’ Boy? She’s encouragin’ them girls!’

‘This is all we need.’

‘You’re tellin’ me! It’s as much as I can do to keep a halter on that friggin’ Chinkee bint.’

‘I understand ye’re close.’

Girly smiled, so fondly, despite her hard words; Ol’ Boy could read the love. He worried where it might send the town.

‘Way I am with Jenni,’ she said, ‘dunno whether to put in the adoption papers or take her slant eyes out with a six-inch dirk.’

‘She’s impressive,’ Ol’ Boy admitted.

Girly hacked out a chuckle.

‘S’the way she hold me gaze an’ all, y’know? Ne’er let it flit at all, like. Stone cold!’

‘I hold your gaze, Girly.’

‘Yeah, but you’re all act.’

It was the lines that came with a smile that stung, and Ol’ Boy duly winced. That he recovered as quickly was the mark of his skill. Gauche, he knew, to ask, but he could not resist.

‘So who’d you reckon on, Girly? If Logan’s done his time…’

Girly creased again with laughter – as though she’d answer! The laughter was torture but slowly she recovered, and she poured another whiskey, and she lit another tab, and she said:

‘Tell ya this, Ol’ Boy. S’been keepin’ me awake nights. But I’ll keep ya posted on me call, y’check?’

Take a left out of the Yella Hall station – as so few of us ever do – and you will come quickly to a long, curving run of pathway known as Riverside Boulevard. It follows the Bohane river along the last of the city’s bluffs until the river opens out to a vague, estuarine nowhere. Haggard seabirds hover above the empty walkway, and the air is ghostly. It is a place few of us go to because of its strangeness. You will encounter there an overwhelming sense of déjà vu. Invariably, that odd swoop in the spirit occurs, and you are flung back to an inner lost-time that you can never quite place. It is a frightening sensation – one senses an odd lurch within, a movement that can feel almost nauseous. Thoughts come loose. Souls hang on the air. Warps occur. And Logan Hartnett, dream-sick in April, sold to the pipe and heartache, had begun almost daily to haunt the place.

He walked it; he fed on the weird. He chased with clouded eyes the flight of the demon skuas. Hummed softly. And he made – with pale lips moving – his dark reckonings.