Kevin Barry - There Are Little Kingdoms

‘Hiya John!’

A headful of tousled locks emerges from a doorway. The vet has a stevedore handshake and millionaire teeth. He is a tan, highlighted guy of maybe sixty five. Dev reclines on a space-age gurney. She wears an expression of sainted pain. She averts her gaze from John Martin. She has the look of a brittle heiress cruelly sectioned in the ripe years.

‘Clearly, yes, it’s a moody little thing we got on our hands,’ says the square-jawed vet, and he flicks at his bleachy flop of hair.

‘I imagine the pregnancy would be…’

‘There are hormonal events, absolutely, but from what I’ve been told, things are cutting a little deeper with Dev. I’ve done bloods, they’ll go for checks, and what can I say? We’ll play wait-see.’

‘And, eh…’

‘Now maybe a lot of this stuff will resolve itself in the very near future.’

‘Once she has the litter?’

‘It should do an amount for her temperament, John, but even so I feel things have got to a stage where I’m going to prescribe an additional treatment. At least for the time being.’

‘Oh?’

‘To be sure to be sure. Belt and braces.’

He presents John Martin with a small white packet containing forty-eight sachets of K-9 Serenity.

‘You sprinkle it on her dinner, just the one a day.’

‘What is it, exactly?’

‘It’s an anti-depressant.’

‘The dog is depressed?’

‘It would seem so, John, yes.’

John Martin settles with glowering Svetlana; cash, as he no longer holds an account at the vet’s. Dev’s treatment costs about the same as a week in France. He is not in a position to grizzle about this, as he has a more pressing concern. De Valera is refusing to walk. He tugs on the leash, but there is venomous resistance. He tugs again, and she yelps. The matrons on the couches mutter. De Valera moans. He drags her across the slate tiles. He bends to pick her up and finds there is an unpredictable amount of spaniel to deal with, and the thought of the litter inside is queasy. On the street, she snarls at him. He has to hold her at arm’s length to prevent blood being drawn. He puts her down on the pavement with more force than is necessary.

‘For fucksake, Dev! Behave!’

An assault of fresh rain is carried slant-wise from the west. A tuneless brass band strikes up inside. Nervous agitation works like water on stone. It is a slow, steady dripping that can meet no answering force. Over time, it washes everything away.

With De Valera livid in the passenger seat, John Martin drives out the far side of the town. He stops at Lidl and pops in for some German condoms. There is a twilight beach scene on the pack: a big blonde couple, arm in arm, up to their eyeballs in it by a dusk-marooned sea.

The town recedes in the rear-view mirror. He pulls onto the bare, desolate stretch of L_______ Road. He parks at the usual place. He is about to set off when Dev begins to rave and foam again. The dog might be heard, might draw prying eyes to this quiet place. He rips open two sachets of K-9 Serenity and sprinkles them on the floor in back — it is a greyish mica dust, and De Valera is drawn to it like love.

John Martin slips away, and cuts across by Tobin’s field. He feels a familiar guilt — not two weeks previously, he had dosed also his daughter.

It was a Saturday evening, at the hotel bar. It was the usual run of things.

You’d do a few bits in town, and then hit back to D_____’s Hotel for a feed of drink. All the other couples would be around, all the old familiars. John and Mary Martin fell in as always with Frank and Madge Howe. Frank had been making cracks about it for months. He said they’ll be talking, John, they’ll be asking questions, mark my words. Who’s with who, they’ll say. He had brought it up, again and again, and it seemed less jokey each time. Then he took John Martin aside in the gents.

‘What about it?’ he said. ‘Grown adults so we are?’

John Martin blushed, and chuckled, but Howe continued.

‘No objections on our side,’ he said. ‘Sure yez could come on up after?’

John Martin tried to laugh it off but there was a tension. In the lounge, he told Mary, and she smiled and said:

‘Arra. They’re lively at least.’

‘I don’t think he’s messing any more, Mary. I think he’s full in earnest.’

‘Sure what harm in it?’ she said.

Then they were back in the front room of the terrace house the Howes were renting. Curry boxes everywhere, vodka and beer. Frank was messing with the stereo and singing along, red in the face. Madge and Mary were skitting and whispering. Frank went up the stairs and came back down with a huge pile of sports jackets in bright colours.

‘My new line,’ he said, ‘they’re selling like hot dogs so they are.’

‘Cakes,’ said John Martin. ‘Hot cakes.’

‘Will you do a spot of modelling for me, Johnnie boy?’

And the two of them paraded up and down, in the jackets, and pushed the sleeves up, play-acting.

‘Crockett and Tubbs!’ roared Madge.

And ‘The Best of The Eagles’ was put on and they all danced and Frank said, what about it, Tubbs?

Then it blurred, and Frank and Mary walked out of the living room.

‘Come on, John,’ said Madge, and she grabbed the car keys, ‘we’ll head for yours.’

You imagine the whole wife-swapping business would take four decisions but really it only takes three.

He moves across the low dip of the bottom fields, rat-faced with need and longing. His long arms swing with intent, one then the other in slow pendulum. He mutters onto his breath as he walks. He climbs over the fence and onto the Flaherty land. An old horse they keep, spared the knackers out of sentiment, regards him with due suspicion, with a knowingness, and returns to its cud with patent disgust. The Flaherty house arises, and he squints towards the yard to make sure there is no Rover jeep there. Lit with nerves and excitement, priapic in the sour light of noon, he approaches the kitchen window, and taps, and she comes to it at once. He blows a fog onto the pane. She unlatches the door, with a scowl, and he steps inside, with a quick squint over his shoulder, and he goes for her.

‘Back off!’ she says.

‘What are you talking about, Noreen? You told me come!’

The long arms swing out, beseeching.

‘I made a mistake. You can take off from here now and don’t mind the old shite talk. He’s only gone in for diesel.’

‘Don’t be telling lies! You wouldn’t have told me come if it was diesel. I have yokes.’

He shows the condom packet.

‘You come around here sniffing like a mutt!’ she hisses, and begins to cry. ‘I made the mistake before, I won’t make it again! Out!’

‘An hour ago, Noreen! Park by the L_______ Road, you said. Cut across by Tobin’s field. Am I making this up?’

‘You’re under stress, John. This isn’t the answer! Just go, okay?’

‘I see,’ he says, ‘I see what you’re trying to do here. You’re trying to turn it back on me. You’re…’

The Rover jeep pulls into the yard. Noreen freezes, then goes into convulsions, her breath rolls through her system in heavy gulps, and she grips the fridge to keep the feet beneath her. John Martin almost smiles: ah not this old dance again. From the window, he can see big Jim Flaherty pounding across the yard. This Flaherty is no gentle giant. He is carrot-topped, with a hair-trigger temper, and a specific distaste for John Martin on account of a previous situation involving lambs. Now he fills the kitchen door. Now he lays his eyes on John Martin.

‘Jim! The very man. I was only in looking for you. What I wanted to know, Jim, was had you the loan of a wire-cutters? I’ve only an auld bevel-edge below, no use at all for the job at hand. It’s a new boundary I’m putting up for the chickens, give them some bit of a run at least. They’d reef themselves if I went at it with the bevel-edge. What I’d need would be a semi-flush. Of course it’s a last-minute job, as usual. I have herself from the O.C.B. coming around to me. Today, would you believe, and I’m still at it. So would you ah… would you ah… The last minute man! Dancing with the devil in the pale moonlight.’