Kevin Barry - There Are Little Kingdoms

A man walks into a corner shop. He is a nervous man, easily knocked from his groove, and it is a great disturbance to him when he is addressed by a four foot tall chicken.

‘Cluckety cluck,’ it says. ‘Try your luck?’

Ralph Coughlan and the chicken have this encounter six days a week and it’s doing neither of them any favours. He knows there is a motion sensor embedded behind the chicken’s eyes that clocks his movement. He is quite aware that it is an electronic chicken that lays plastic eggs containing trinkets and toys but even so, it leaves him a little shook. It’s got to the stage where he is trying to tiptoe past the chicken to dodge the sensor’s reach. It is a Tuesday, in March, with all that that suggests. Ralph scans the magazine racks as he waits to be served. All the magazines are about extreme sports and cannabis cultivation techniques. The shop is operated by an unpleasantly owl-faced woman. Not once in four years has he had even a suggestion of warmth from this person. He knows that ‘perceived slights’ is one of the key danger signs but there is nothing perceived about it. He is always super-friendly himself, to provide an instructive contrast with her surliness, but you might as well instruct the wall. He buys a sausage roll, a Diet Coke, and a scratchcard. She slams his change onto the counter and eyes him as though to say, more? Is there something more?

‘Ferocious day alright,’ he says. ‘But typical enough for March, I suppose?’

‘Yeah?’

‘That’s a breeze would take skin off you.’

‘Is it?’

He goes to sit on a bench that overlooks one of the river’s drearier stretches. They have some cheek putting a bench down here. It is a most exposed spot and there isn’t a day you get up off this bench you’re not red in the face from wind. There is drizzle and general damp. It’s the sort of town that would give you a chest infection. He eats his lunch. He scratches away the useless card. He wonders about the latest knot in his gut and the new tremble that’s put in an appearance on his upper lip.

Ralph’s is a hard-luck street down by the quays. There is, more often than not, a dead dog in the gutter. A man behind a pram waits for the lights and coos over his baby. Outside the off-licence, some haughty drunks contest the hold of a bottle. It is a place for connoisseurs of the forlorn and the shop fronts are painted in carnival colours. Ralph bins his trash and crosses the road to his place of business. He is subject to seething monotones and moments of glow.

Someone has left a box in the doorway. This bugs him, big time. People think they can treat Coughlan’s like a charity shop. They say hey, listen, okay, what we’ll do? We’ll drop it off with the guy down the quay, the guy with the hair. Ralph drags the box into the shop and kicks it to one side. He becomes philosophical then — at least the box can occupy a segment of his Wednesday. Ralph divides his days into segments, with each segment defined by a designated task.

The next segment is marked down for polishing. They aren’t exactly beating down the door but that’s no reason to let things go. When the customers do arrive, Coughlan’s will be looking as well as it has any right to look. Ralph has a selection of chamois leathers for polishing. He has great belief in the restorative powers of a shammy. He feels a measure of happiness as he polishes but tries not to notice it. Ralph stocks select pieces of second-hand furniture, some antiques, and smaller items that could be classed only as ornaments. He sources from auction rooms, clearance sales and the more distant coves of eBay. Ralph’s shop is in the wrong part of town. It has dawned on him that there isn’t much of an incidental trade for antiques and ornaments down here. He polishes a brass monocular that has been in the shop since day one. It is an excellent monocular, in fine working nick, and well priced. What could be more convenient for the casual birder out for a peep at the oystercatchers in Crosshaven of a Sunday? But there’s a problem, Ralph realises, with monoculars. People feel stupid using them. They feel like they’re playing at being Jack Palance in a pirate film.

Ralph polishes a vintage dairy urn. He is having his doubts about the vintage dairy urn. His initial feeling was that it might appeal to sentimental people who had background in the country, that it would make a talking point in a hall, but there aren’t many sentimental people on the ground lately. He runs a cloth over a very nice telephone table. It is a lovely piece, with a built-in stool and a neat slot for a phone book. It has a racy, late ’50s air, practical yet stylish. You could see an elegant lady sat down at it, with the legs crossed, taking a call. Ralph can almost hear the rustle of her nylons. She’s in a pair of kitten heels and Cary Grant is at the other end of the line.

Ralph’s polishing takes on the heat of frenzy. He does a mantel clock he bought from the tinkers in Bantry, then a selection of Ardagh crystal pieces, then some Victorian doorknobs. He squidgees the windows. He has a panic attack of middling intensity — it feels like some cats have got loose inside his chest — and he clutches at a rad for support. He has run out of things to polish. There’s nothing for it but to open the box that was left in the doorway. It is the kind of day a man is well advised to keep busy.

It’s mostly junk. A scratched magnifying glass, old paperbacks, a wooden jewellery case with carved elephants and inside a legend scrawled in black marker—‘Patricia Loves Bay City Rollers’—and he can see her, with wispy hair and a gammy eye, her spectacles held with cellotape in 1974. A figurine of a pissing boy, an imitation Wedgwood plate, more paperbacks, but then a nice old oil lamp, with a brass frame surrounding a smoky brown glass. Ralph fills it with the paraffin he keeps in the shop for just this purpose. Nostalgic people like oil lamps, and he has sold a few. The wick takes nicely but the flame shows up some smears on the brown glass. Ralph takes a shammy to the glass and polishes it carefully.

A genie appears.

The manner of the apparition is much as we have been led to expect. There is a puff of purple smoke and a male figure floats up out of the lamp in a comfortably cross-legged sitting pose, like a man who has put the hours in on the yoga mat. But then the smoke clears and the genie separates from legend. There are no tapered slippers nor flowing silks. He wears no turban, nor fathomless expression. He wears a pair of troubled chinos, an overcoat with fag burns on its lapels, a pair of scuffed Nikes and a leery, self-satisfied smirk. He’s one of those small butty fellas, fortyish, thinning up top, and the bit of hair that’s left could usefully be introduced to a bottle of Head ‘n’ Shoulders.

‘How’d you like this for caper?’ he says.

‘Listen,’ says Ralph. ‘I can’t be dealing with this kind of messin’. I’m on tablets, like.’

‘Relax,’ says the genie. ‘Just try and calm yourself, okay? The last thing we want is you on the flat of your back outside in the Regional. Have a sit down, Mr Coughlan. Take it easy.’

The genie sits at the telephone table. He primly lifts an imagined receiver, with his pinkie finger cocked.

‘Hallooo?’ he says. ‘Halloooooo? Coughlan’s?’

He takes out a packet of Rothmans, lights one, then lets up a terrible, wracking cough.

‘It’s these fuckers have me nearly murdered, Ralph,’ he says.

Ralph goes behind his counter and pops an emergency beta-blocker.

‘You want to clear out of here now,’ he says, ‘or I’ll call the guards.’

‘And you’re going to say what, Ralph?’

Ralph’s eyes water up. His voice becomes scratchy and gasped.