Kevin Barry - There Are Little Kingdoms

‘Shot, James.’

‘Shot, Jamesie.’

‘Shot.’

‘Shot, boy.’

The hymn was ignored, was disdained. He leaned for a tap-in red to the middle right, its ease a result of his positional play, and he made it without fuss. A lesser player would be inclined to ram in the easier pots with showy force and venom, but always James played the game quietly, he would roll his reds gently home rather than slam them, he would apply no more force than was needed, and for this reason it was exquisite to watch him play, and the arcade was hushed in the presence of his talent.

Just then, the air changed: a small troop of girls arrived in, a battalion of three. They had vinegar in them and they roved their dangerous eyes around the habitutees and they were a carnival of cheap perfume on young skin and whatever summer was they’d trapped its essence and fizzed with it. The habituees developed deeper slouches, and their heads went shyly down, and they moved back into the shadows if they could, but their eyes were uncontrollable and darted up insanely for an eyeful of suntanned girl and they couldn’t but wince from the delirious pain of it. All the boys became awkward like this, and thick-tongued, all except James. He laid the cue across the table, rubbed his meaty hands together, straightened his shoulders, closed his eyes, shook his head in wonderment and he said:

‘Ladies? I’ll say one thing now for nothing. I’ve seen ye lookin’ well in yere time but never as well as ye’re lookin’ tonight.’

It was the girls’ turn to be shy. His hungry gaze asked severe questions of their confidence and inside they seethed at being reduced to these giggles, this nudging. They went and staked out the ground around the wall-mounted jukebox, it was their acknowledged terrain, and they hummed and hawed over the selections and James strode across the floor, searched for another coin in the pocket of his big jeans as he moved, and with a polite gesture of the hand moved the girls back a little from the jukebox and put the coin in the slot and selected the song that was currently at the top of the charts. He took the cue from the table to use as a microphone and he launched powerfully into song as ‘Baby Jane’ by Rod Stewart struck up on the tinny speakers, and he planted his feet wide on the floor, rock star fashion, and he had all the required shimmies of hip and flicks of hair, and laughter took hold of the arcade, again, and everybody was relaxed and easy again.

A farm truck pulled up on the forecourt outside, and dispensed a farmer, and Moloney shrugged out of his kiosk and nodded curtly, and received a curt nod in payment, and Moloney crossed his arms and leaned back against the pumps.

‘That was some messin’ below in Clancy Park on Sunday,’ said Moloney.

‘Shocking,’ said the farmer.

‘There’re fellas should be shot,’ said Moloney.

‘Don’t be talking to me,’ agreed the farmer.

‘You could put stones in jerseys and you’d get more out of them.’

‘You nearly could.’

‘But listen to me, did you have any joy with them creatures above?’

The farmer looked to the velvet sky, and he considered the vagaries of life, chance, and sheep management.

‘There’s no getting them down off that blasted hill,’ he said. ‘I’m going to have to come up with a new tactic.’

And Broad Street was on fire. The last of the evening gave out in a show of dying golds and reds. The street lamps came on. The blue flicker of television screens could be seen behind terrace windows. The summer night announced itself, with its own starlit energies. It brought temptation, yearning and ache, because these are the summer things.

James slotted a straight red into the top left pocket, and he applied top spin to the cue ball so that it rolled onto the top cushion and allowed him to line up the last of the reds. This would be tricky, because great precision was required when the cushions came into play, and he lit a cigarette to consider it. Carmody was his opponent, again, and he was all but beaten anyway, Carmody was beaten in the mind even before they began to play, but all the same James liked to win stylishly and well, he liked to make little gasps escape the habituees when he achieved the unlikely shots. He paused now to draw attention to the table before he attempted the difficult red.

‘You’re putting it up to me tonight, Carm,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what’s after getting into you but you’ve moved on to a new level of expertise altogether. Are you practicing on the sly?’

The habituees quietened, and moved in closer, because they could sense a put-down in the making. James had gone into the familiar pose, with the head held at a slight incline, and he regarded Carmody down his nose, and there was a thin set to the mouth, and he expelled air from the nostrils with a powerful snort, and he said:

‘You’re practicing on the sly in the barn, aren’t you? You’re like…’

He put the cue down and danced a two-step.

‘You’re like an auld farmer hitting off to a matchmaking festival. He’s had the first bath of the year. He has the hair slicked back with strong tea. He’s dragged a comb through his teeth…’

The titters and giggles built nervously, as the habituees waited to see where James would take it.

‘…and he’s set the hens on automatic. He’s worried about the dancing, of course he is, the man has titanium hips, so he’s clearin’ back the floor of the barn, of an evening, when the working day is done, and he’s trying out a shtep.’

And he did a high-kick step in the air, and the laughter rumbled, and built.

‘And he’s saying what I need for myself now is… a nice good little nurse. Do you know the way? A nice little nurse from an ear, nose and throat ward. He’s always maintained a bit of a grá for nurses, because they’d be kind to you, wouldn’t they, of a cold winter’s night, with the big thighs wrapped around your throat?’

The girls gasped and tssked. The habituees shook their heads, embarrassed with mirth. They never knew where to look when James roamed abroad on a course.

‘It’s the way I see it, Carm. You’re practicing on the sly in the barn, like the auld farmer, by the light of a lonesome moooooooon!’

And as he crooned the word, cowboy-style, he leaned in to attend to his shot: full attention had now been secured for the pool table. He made his bridge, tapped the baize three times with his middle finger, rolled the white along the cushion, it kissed the red, and gave it momentum to move at a slow even pace, and the red yawned for a moment on the lip of the pocket, as though he hadn’t given it enough, but of course he had, and it dropped.

‘Shot, James!’

‘Shot, Jamesie.’

‘Shot boy.’

‘You’re a fucking lunatic, James,’ said Carmody, and tapped the butt of his cue three times on the concrete floor.

‘Sure I know that.’

Moloney put the petrol takings into a tin box, turned off the transistor and locked up the kiosk. He crossed the forecourt, carrying the tin box reverently, and he cursed at the weather. Ten o’clock at night and you were walking around the place in soup. He put his head around the door of the arcade.

‘Ye’ve an hour till I close it up.’

‘Not a bother,’ said James.

‘And keep it down a bit, for Jesus’ sake.’

‘Absolutely,’ said James.

‘An hour,’ said Moloney. ‘D’ye hear me?’

James laid the cue on the table, goose-stepped across the floor, threw his right arm into salute and cried out:

‘Selbstverständlich, mein Kommandant!’

‘And you watch yourself!’

Moloney tried and failed to keep the smile from his face, and he left them to it. This was the signal that the night was truly rolling, and for the more dangerous talk to begin. The younger of the habituees, earlier indulged, would now be pushed to the peripheries. The older ones would draw up schemes of devilment for the small hours. The girls became nervous.