Kevin Barry - Dark Lies the Island

‘Or a shade past that?’ said John Mosely.

‘You could be right on higher than sevens,’ said Billy Stroud. ‘But surely we’re not calling it an eight?’

‘Here we go,’ I said.

‘Now this,’ said Billy Stroud, ‘is where your 7.5s would come in.’

‘We’ve heard this song, Billy,’ said John Mosely.

‘He may not be wrong, John,’ said Everett.

‘Give him a 7.5,’ said John Mosely, ‘and he’ll be wanting his 6.3s, his 8.6s. There’d be no bloody end to it!’

‘Tell you what,’ said Mo. ‘How about I catch up with you all a bit later? Where’s next on the list?’

We stared at the carpet. It had diamonds on and crisps ground into it.

‘Next up is the Crippled Ox on Burton Square,’ I read from my printout. ‘Then it’s Henderson’s on Old Parade.’

‘See you at one or the other,’ said Mo.

He threw back the dregs of his St Austell and was gone.

We decided on another at the Otter. There was a Whitstable Silver Star, 6.2 per cent to volume, a regular stingo to settle our nerves.

‘What’s the best you’ve ever had?’ asked Tom N.

It’s a conversation that comes up again and again but it was a life-saver just then: it took our minds off Mo.

‘Put a gun to my head,’ said Big John, ‘and I don’t think I could look past the draught Bass I had with me dad in Peter Kavanagh’s. Sixteen years of age, Friday teatime, first wage slip in my arse pocket.’

‘But was it the beer or the occasion, John?’

‘How can you separate the two?’ he said, and we all sighed.

‘For depth? Legs? Back-note?’ said Everett Bell. ‘I’d do well to ever best the Swain’s Anthem I downed a November Tuesday in Stockton-on-Tees: 19 and 87. 4.2 per cent to volume. I was still in haulage at that time.’

‘I’ve had an Anthem,’ said Billy Stroud of this famously hard-to-find brew, ‘and I’d have to say I found it an unexceptional ale.’

Everett made a face.

‘So what’d be your all-time, Billy?’

The ex-Marxist knitted his fingers atop the happy mound of his belly.

‘Ridiculous question,’ he said. ‘There is so much wonderful ale on this island. How is a sane man to separate a Pelham High Anglican from a Warburton’s Saxon Fiend? And we haven’t even mentioned the great Belgian tradition. Your Duvel’s hardly a dishwater. Then there’s the Czechs, the Poles, the Germans …’

‘Gassy pop!’ cried Big John, no fan of a German brew, of a German anything.

‘Nonsense,’ said Billy. ‘A Paulaner Weissbier is a sensational sup on its day.’

‘Where’d you think Mo’s headed?’ Tom N cut in.

Everett groaned:

‘He’ll be away down the Prom View, won’t he? Big ape.’

‘Mo a ladykiller?’ said Tom. ‘There’s one for breaking news.’

‘No harm if it meant he smartened himself up a bit,’ said John.

‘He has let himself go,’ said Billy. ‘Since the testicle.’

‘You’d plant spuds in those ears,’ I said.

The Whitstables had us in fighting form. We were away up the Crippled Ox. We found there a Miner’s Slattern on cask. TV news showed sardine beaches and motorway chaos. There was an internet machine on the wall, a pound for ten minutes, and Billy Stroud went to consult the meteorological satellites. The Slattern set me pensive

Strange, I thought, how I myself had wound up a Real Ale Club stalwart. 1995, October, I’d found myself in motorway services outside Ormskirk having a screaming barny with the missus. We were moving back to her folks’ place in Northern Ireland. From dratted Leicester. We were heading for the ferry at Stranraer. At services, missus told me I was an idle lardarse who had made her life hell and she never wanted to see me again. We’d only stopped off to fill the tyres. She gets in, slams the door, puts her foot down. Give her ten minutes, I thought, she’ll calm down and turn back for me. Two hours later, I’m sat in an empty Chinese in services, weeping, and eating Szechuan beef. I call a taxi. Taxi comes. I says where are we, exactly? Bloke looks at me. He says Ormskirk direction. I says what’s the nearest city of any size? Drop you in Liverpool for twenty quid, he says. He leaves me off downtown and I look for a pub. Spot the Ship and Mitre and in I go. I find a stunning row of pumps. I call a Beaver Mild out of Devon.

‘I wouldn’t,’ says a bloke with a beard down the bar.

‘Oh?’

‘Try a Marston’s Old Familiar,’ he says, and it turns out he’s Billy Stroud.

The same Billy turned from the internet machine at the Ox in Llandudno.

‘37.9,’ he said. ‘Bristol Airport, a shade after three. Flights delayed, tarmac melting.’

‘Pig heat,’ said Tom N.

‘We won’t suffer much longer,’ said Billy. ‘There’s a change due.’

‘Might get a night’s sleep,’ said Everett.

The hot nights were certainly a torment. Lying there with a sheet stuck to your belly. Thoughts coming loose, beer fumes rising, a manky arse. The city beyond the flat throbbing with summer. Usually I’d get up and have a cup of tea, watch some telly. Astrophysics on Beeb Two at four in the morning, news from the galaxies, and light already in the eastern sky. I’d dial the number in Northern Ireland and then hang up before they could answer.

Mo arrived into the Ox like the ghost of Banquo. There were terrible scratch marks down his left cheek.

‘A Slattern will set you right, kid,’ said John Mosely, discreetly, and he manoeuvred his big bones barwards.

Poor Mo was wordless as he stared into the ale that was put before him. Billy Stroud sneaked a time-out signal to Big John.

‘We’d nearly give Henderson’s a miss,’ agreed John.

‘As well get back to known terrain,’ said Everett.

We climbed the hot streets towards the station. We stocked up with some Cumberland Pedigrees, 3.4 per cent to volume, always an easeful drop. The train was busy with daytrippers heading back. We sipped quietly. Mo looked half dead as he slumped there but now and then he’d come up for a mouthful of his Pedigree.

‘How’s it tasting, kiddo?’ chanced Everett.

‘Like a ten,’ said Mo, and we all laughed.

The flicker of his old humour reassured us. The sun descended on Colwyn Bay and there was young life everywhere. I’d only spoken to her once since Ormskirk. We had details to finalise, and she was happy to let it slip about her new bloke. Some twat called Stan.

‘He’s emotionally spectacular,’ she said.

‘I’m sorry to hear it, love,’ I said. ‘Given you’ve been through the wringer with me.’

‘I mean in a good way!’ she barked. ‘I mean in a calm way!’

We’d a bit of fun coming up the Dee Estuary with the Welsh place names.

‘Fy … feen … no. Fiiiif … non … fyff … non … growy?’

This was Tom N.

‘Foy. Nonn. Grewey?’

This was Everett’s approximation.

‘Ffynnongroew,’ said Billy Stroud, lilting it perfectly. ‘Simple. And this one coming up? Llannerch-y-mor.’

Pedigree came down my nose I laughed that hard.

‘Young girl, beautiful,’ said Mo. ‘Turn around and she’s forty bloody three.’

‘Leave it, Mo,’ said Big John.

But he could not.

‘She’s come over early in ’86. She’s living up top of the Central line, Theydon Bois. She’s working in a pub there, live-in, and ringing me from a phone box. In Galway I’m in a phone box too — we have to arrange the times, eight o’clock on Tuesday, ten o’clock on Friday. It’s physical fucking pain she’s not in town any more. I’ll follow in the summer is the plan and I get there, Victoria Coach Station, six in the morning, eighty quid in my pocket. And she’s waiting for me there. We have an absolute dream of a month. We’re lying in the park. There’s a song out and we make it our song. “Oh to be in England, in the summertime, with my love, close to the edge”.’