Kevin Barry - City of Bohane

‘Oh?’

‘It’s just sometimes I get a black feeling…’

‘She’s well hid, sir.’

‘Where have you her, Nora?’

‘I wouldn’t even tell you that, Mr Mannion.’

‘Trace-side anyway, I s’pose?’

‘She’s well hid, sir.’

They sat a while. And then he turned to her again, and squeezed her hand, and he said:

‘Will you sing one for me, Nora?’

She loosed a hard laugh that rippled her fleshy shoulders. She took a nip of the Beast from the flask he offered. She leaned back, and a lovely gentleness spread over her features, and it was from the heart that she sang:

Jenni Ching had the polis palm crossed with Judas coin and them polis fucks they was hard-prepped for a swipe at the sand-pikey ranks, y’sketchin’?

Jenni Ching had her lovelorn beau Wolfie-boy Stanners hard-prepped to wield a shkelp in the direction of the Far-Eye maniac Prince Tubby, y’heed?

Jenni Ching had a pack of feral teenage sluts at her beck ’n’ call in the Bohane Trace, y’check me?

Every time Logan closed his eyes he saw Fucker again. He saw the pain, the way it twisted as the shkelp was moved neatly from side to side, and then the quick deadening of the features. He felt over and again the moment, the way he had leaned in, sadly, and the feeling of the dead boy’s brow as it fell onto his.

It was the first of his killings that had lingered so. He knew it now for a mistake. He’d seen only the need for vengeance. He hadn’t played the long game. He hadn’t reckoned on the loyalty a reprieve might have bred in the Fancy’s ranks. Gant had been right – he should have just sent the galoot out the High Boreen.

Logan Hartnett was the most sober man on De Valera Street. He walked a tread of memory and regret. The street in the hot afternoon roiled, thrashed, simmered; August Fair was remorseless.

From her divan, at the sad bordello, Blind Nora yet sang:

At the Capricorn Bar, as the crowds thronged outside on the Bohane front, as the Merries got into swing, the old-timers worked a whiskey-fed reminiscence, and the Gant was its conductor:

‘Of course the Vindicator itself was at that time on De Valera Street?’

‘It was. This would have been before Big Dom Gleeson’s time. Before Dom came in and got notions about the New Town.’

‘Notions in Bohane’d be nothin’ new.’

‘No, Gant.’

‘What was the bar the Vindicator lads would drink in? The printers?’

‘You mean the place…’

‘Down off…’

‘Off…’

‘Half Moon Street?’

‘Precisely so… You’re talking about the Llama, aren’t you?’

‘No I am not. I remember the Llama. A filthy place.’

‘Filthy. A honk out of it.’

‘A honk that’d knock you. But that wasn’t the printers’ bar… Was it Corbett’s I’m thinkin’ of?’

‘Corbett’s was polis always… The polis frats all drank there, goin’ way, waaay back…’

Yes. A dim-lit saloon with pictures of old sergeants on the walls. Touts sneaking out of it late on – looking left, then right, a swivel of their Judas eyes. A jukebox loaded with sentimental Irish ballads (‘Mother McCree’, ‘Four Green Fields’, ‘The Goat Broke Loose’) and in the lounge section a few sanctioned hoors peddling herb and dream up top of their tricks.

‘Corbett’s was polis, you’re right.’

‘Polis had more to them at that time.’

‘They did. And were rotten on account o’ the heft they had.’

‘Rotten… And do you remember at all Silly Herbert the loolah?’

‘Ah poor Silly! I do.’

The Gant all but weeping then.

‘A desperate masturbator!’

‘Will anyone ever forgot the time he hauled it out in the middle of the 98er Square?’

‘Of a Christmas Eve?’

‘An’ he chokin’ the squirrel?’

Christmas Eve, and poor Silly, the lunatic, smashed on sherry given as a present by the Devotional Brigade, with his hideously long member in his hand, and he lying in the middle of the square, with his kecks around his ankles, and the old Trace crones blessing themselves as they passed by, with fresh-plucked fowl and bags of Brussels sprouts under their oxters, and trying to keep straight faces on them, and failing.

‘Silly came to a bad end. Of course they do, up in that place they had him.’

‘And there was Candy, do you remember Candy?’

‘Candy Stanners!’

‘I dunno if there was ever a finer dip-pocket on Dev.’

‘Not a one then or since fit to lace her boots.’

‘Of course she’d a bad end as well.’

‘That’s the Back Trace for you.’

‘Oh that’s the Trace.’

Wolfie for a share of quiet travelled the Back Trace rooftops. He scaled the Trace by the rickety Zs of its rusting fire escapes. He turned at the landing of each flight, and climbed again with a jolting grab on the handrail, and the packed wynds faded to a grey-voiced murmuring below – his stomper boots bamped the oxide-red steps.

Tenements were so densely packed you could make it across the Trace without ever once setting foot on the ground. It just took a leap here and there, that was all, above the green voids of the wynds.

He looked out into the Murk, and he remembered Candy, the softness of her touch. He felt the fear reach deep into his bones now – he no longer had the galoot beside him.

Wolfie riffed on a double-tip:

He would take the Far-Eye – he had shamed his clutch, and Jenni came first. And then he would take vengeance for Fucker – the ’bino would suffer.

Wolfie on the rooftops felt for the shkelp, and he wielded it for heft and balance in his palm, and he twirled it, and flicked it, and he caught it.

Night would come quickly.

And Blind Nora in the bordello sang:

Ol’ Boy Mannion left Blind Nora’s, and he skulked through the wynds, and he watched the revel thicken in the Trace, and he bought a falafel from a cart in the 98er Square.

Spat the first bite and tossed the deep-fried mulch back at the cart’s keeper.

‘Wouldn’t feed it to a fuckin’ cat,’ he said.

Hit for the dockside, and he had a particular heaviness on him – an odd feeling. Name it fear. Checked his timepiece, and he made for the livestock yards, as the Fair Day’s late bidding rose to a great and rhythmical chant in the near distance. It was out back of the yards that Ol’ Boy rendezvoused with the mute child.

Child was a scruffy wee thing off the far reaches of Nothin’, about knee-high to a grasshopper, with a snotty face on, and that strange, impenetrable glaze you’d get always on a bog-plain no-speak.

Of course, Big Nothin’ has always been known for its high incidence of mutes. You would so often see those wordless children out there, roaming the wastes, forming abstract shapes on their lips, and squealing mournfully into the hardwind.

Now the mute eyed Mannion and he was brazen and wilful.

‘Bin the hardchaw gimmick,’ said Ol’ Boy. ‘Where’s the cratur?’

Mute child flapped an arm and directed Ol’ Boy towards a dark corner of the stock sheds. There the most regal puck was tethered.