Kevin Barry - There Are Little Kingdoms

An engine subsides in the yard outside. John Martin shakes himself alive and thinks no, Jesus, she can’t be here already. He scurries to the yard but it is not the woman from the O.C.B. It is the grey Suzuki van. It’s Frank Howe!

Howe steps out of the van, displays his palms in a gesture of openness and shucks the cuffs of his jacket.

‘What about you, Big Man?’ he says.

Howe is from the north and has crude animal intelligence. He can smell weakness and need. He steps across the greasy, puddled yard, and he kicks the fire-snapping cable from his path. John Martin raises a trembling hand to stop him.

‘Frank,’ he says. ‘I’m going to ask you to clear out of here now. And I’m not going to ask you twice.’

He takes a wrench from the ground and holds it in threat above his head. He assumes an attack stance.

‘Easy, killer,’ says Howe. ‘Is that one of mine?’

Frank Howe sells combination socket wrench sets at the markets. He also sells copies of Rolexes, pirate DVDs, illicit growth promoters and directions for dog fights. He stands calmly smiling in the Siberian wind. He chews on a scabbed knuckle. His black leather sports coat has its collar turned up. His peanut-shaped head is shaved to bristles. He has put the hours in on the sunbed. He can be no more than five foot two inches tall.

‘It’s too soon,’ says John Martin. ‘Oh it’s too fresh, Frank! Fuck off out of here now lively.’

‘She inside?’

‘I’m warning you!’

‘You’ll warn nobody, John. We’re as well to get that clear for a start. Put the wrench down and come in and talk to me like a good man.’

Mon, a gude mon. Howe strides like a six-footer into the poultry shed. He drags out a pail and sits on it. He sets his face sternly, and hovers his fingers in the air: a kestrel waiting to swoop, or a concert pianist poised to begin.

‘I am a man,’ he says, slowly, emphasising each word.

Aaah… ohmmm… a… mon.

‘And she,’ says Howe, ‘is a woman.’

A wummun.

John Martin considers cranking shut the slide-door. He considers taking a leap through the air and beating Howe all about the head with the wrench. He could wrap the body in opened sacks and drag it to the prep area and put it through the mincer, piece by piece, mix it with the mix for the meatballs, flavour with coriander and lime, put it out to the farmers’ markets, Thai-style.

‘You,’ says Howe, ‘are a man.’

He winks, appreciatively, at John Martin.

‘And Madge,’ he smiles, ‘is a woman.’

Howe shuts his eyes and takes a small bow.

‘End of story,’ he says. ‘I had a go off yours. You had a go off mine. If you like we can put four crosses on St Jarlath’s pitch and nail ourselves to them. Or we can get on with us lives and forget all about it. Be friends still. Look. Come over tonight, John, bring herself. We’ll have a few drinks and relax, for Godsake. Is all I’m saying to you.’

‘You’re trying to destroy my family,’ says John Martin.

The heads of the chickens twist from each to the other, like the crowd at Roland Garros. Howe stands and kicks the pail aside. He shrugs. He pushes past John Martin in the doorway and heads for the van.

‘Take your ease, John,’ he says. ‘I’ll give yez a tinkle later on, soon as I’m done in Shinrone.’

John Martin walks into the fields of the farm. It is all around him, and there is a vague hissing at its edges, as in a sour dream. She is due for twelve and the place is an out-and-out disaster. Meadowsweet Farm is a concern on the brink. The O.C.B. runs a tight ship, and if they cannot get on board, they might as well turn the place over for sites. Be done with it. He notes a rusted gate and fetches a scraper and opens a fresh tub of the white paint and rinses out a brush under the tap in the yard. He sets to. Madge Howe is an attractive lady but mad. The glazed look, the grey tongue. There is going to be hell to pay. What was he thinking?

He takes rust off the gate. A fine mist of copper-coloured particles lifts into the air and causes him to sneeze. He cannot shake the fear that his daughter has been permanently damaged. She is a spaced out kind of child at the best of times, but she has gone even deeper into herself since. Fear is a black wet ditch on a cold night. It is hard to claw yourself out, your fingers slip in the loam. He puts an undercoat on the gate. He takes a couple of fertiliser bags out of a hedge. He cannot even think about going to have a look at the few cattle. There is a white nervous sky, and magpies are everywhere on patrol, stomping around, like they own the place. He takes one of the phones from his pocket and puts in a call to Noreen.

‘Can I come over?’ he says

‘Oh John,’ she says. ‘No way. I don’t know how long he’s going to be gone.’

‘I can’t stop thinking about you,’ he says.

‘Shut up!’ she says.

‘I want you now, Noreen.’

‘I’m warning you!’ she says.

‘How long is he gone?’

‘No.’

‘Can we not chance it?’

‘No.’

‘I’m in love with you, Noreen,’ he breathes it, a whisper, a husk on the breeze.

‘Park on the L_______ road,’ she says, ‘and come over across by Tobin’s field.’

He climbs into the 4x4. It’ll be chancy on time but what are you going to do? The bayou howl, the bayou howl. He backs out of the yard, goes down the drive, turns onto the road. He will need to stop off in town to pick up condoms. He is in the thirty-seventh winter of his life. The other phone goes, the official line. Caller i.d. says ‘mry’.

‘What?’

‘Where you goin’?’

‘I’ve to head into town.’

‘What for?’

‘I’ve to get rope.’

‘Pick up the dog while you’re there’

‘You’re not serious, Mary? She’s not!’

‘What?’

‘She’s in again ?’

‘Yes.’

‘Arra the fuck, since when?’

‘I’d to drop her in this morning. She was bad. You were told this. You were in the back fields. I’m talking to a wall is what I’m talking to. She’s ready since eleven. They rang. They said pick her up.’

‘She’s in again ?’

Picking up the dog will not be straightforward. The pregnancy has been a nightmare, she’s even been snapping at the child. When John Martin interfered with her supper one night, pushing it out of the way with his foot, she nearly took his face off. She is a fast-tempered spaniel bitch, high-bred, with taut nerves. He breaches the tearful peripheries of the town. He makes it through to the central square under a tormented sky; he parks. The vet’s clinic is on one of the terraces that traipse from the square. There are feelings strong enough to overwhelm the physical laws. There are feelings that can settle in stone. There is an age-old malaise in the vicinity of this terrace. It has soaked into the grain of the place. The afternoons looking out on sheeting rain… The nights staring into the dark infinities… How would a place be right after it?

The vet’s clinic, however, is ignorant of such desperation. It has by force of will and riches wiped it from the hard-drive. The clinic is styled in chrome and blonde wood, there are slate tiles and extravagant leather couches in a reception expertly wardened by a seething goddess of Slavic extraction: a limbre Svetlana. Matronly ladies on the couches nurse trembling small dogs: this time of morning, the vet’s is poodle terrain.

‘Hiya,’ says John Martin. ‘About the dog?’

‘Name, please.’

‘Martin. John Martin.’

‘Dog name!’ spits the ice queen.

‘De Valera.’

She speaks into a headset. Clearance comes through and he is allowed access to the shimmering depths of the building. How the fuck much are vets making these days?